Irreducible Semigroups of Positive Operators on Banach Lattices

TL;DR

This paper extends Perron-Frobenius theory to irreducible semigroups of positive operators on Banach lattices, characterizing their spectral and structural properties, especially when involving compact or peripherally Riesz operators.

Contribution

It generalizes existing results to arbitrary Banach lattices, providing new structural insights into irreducible semigroups of positive operators with compact or Riesz properties.

Findings

Existence of positive disjoint vectors for semigroups with compact operators.

Characterization of irreducible peripherally Riesz operators as cyclic permutations.

Description of limits of scaled powers of such operators.

Abstract

The classical Perron-Frobenius theory asserts that an irreducible matrix $A$ has cyclic peripheral spectrum and its spectral radius $r(A)$ is an eigenvalue corresponding to a positive eigenvector. In Radjavi (1999) and Radjavi and Rosenthal (2000), this was extended to semigroups of matrices and of compact operators on $L_p$-spaces. We extend this approach to operators on an arbitrary Banach lattice $X$. We prove, in particular, that if $\iS$ is a commutative irreducible semigroup of positive operators on $X$ containing a compact operator $T$ then there exist positive disjoint vectors $x_1,...,x_r$ in $X$ such that every operator in $\iS$ acts as a positive scalar multiple of a permutation on $x_1,...,x_r$. Compactness of $T$ may be replaced with the assumption that $T$ is peripherally Riesz, i.e., the peripheral spectrum of $T$ is separated from the rest of the spectrum and the corresponding spectral subspace $X_1$ is finite dimensional. Applying the results to the semigroup generated an irreducible peripherally Riesz operator $T$, we show that $T$ is a cyclic permutation on $x_1,...,x_r$, $X_1=\Span{x_1,...,x_r}$, and if $S=\lim_j b_jT^{n_j}$ for some $(b_j)$ in $\mathbb R_+$ and $n_j\to\infty$ then $S=c(T_{|X_1})^k\oplus 0$ for some $c\ge 0$ and $0\le k<r$. We also extend results of Abramovich et al. (1992) and Grobler (1995) about peripheral spectra of irreducible operators.