Range inclusion and diagonalization of complex symmetric operators

Abstract

We consider the range inclusion and the diagonalization in the Jordan algebra $\mathcal {S}_C$ of C-symmetric operators, that are, bounded linear operators T satisfying $CTC =T^{*}$, where C is a conjugation on a separable complex Hilbert space $\mathcal H$. For $T\in \mathcal {S}_C$, we aim to describe the set $C_{\mathcal {R}(T)}$ of those operators $A\in \mathcal {S}_C$ satisfying the range inclusion $\mathcal {R}(A)\subset \mathcal {R}(T)$. It is proved that (i) $C_{\mathcal {R}(T)}=T\mathcal {S}_C T$ if and only if $\mathcal {R}(T)$ is closed, (ii) $\overline {C_{\mathcal {R}(T)}}=\overline {T\mathcal {S}_C T}$, and (iii) $C_{\overline {\mathcal {R}(T)}}$ is the closure of $C_{\mathcal {R}(T)}$ in the strong operator topology. Also, we extend the classical Weyl–von Neumann Theorem to $\mathcal {S}_C$, showing that every self-adjoint operator in $\mathcal {S}_C$ is the sum of a diagonal operator in $\mathcal {S}_C$ and a compact operator with arbitrarily small Schatten p-norm for $p\in (1,\infty )$.