Weighted Join Operators on Directed Trees

TL;DR

This paper introduces and systematically studies weighted join operators on directed trees, exploring their properties, extensions, spectral characteristics, and conditions for closedness and compact resolvent, expanding the understanding of operator theory on graph structures.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive framework for weighted join operators on directed trees, including their extensions, spectral analysis, and conditions for closedness and compactness, with novel insights into their structure and applications.

Findings

Weighted join operators generalize complex Jordan and n-symmetric operators.

Rank one extensions can be closed under certain compatibility conditions.

Characterization of operators with compact resolvent on leafless trees.

Abstract

A rooted directed tree $\mathscr T=(V, E)$ with can be extended to a directed graph $\mathscr T_\infty=(V_\infty, E_\infty)$ by adding a vertex $\infty$ to $V$ and declaring each vertex in $V$ as a parent of $\infty.$ One may associate with the extended directed tree a family of semigroup structures $\sqcup_{b}$ with extreme ends being induced by the join operation $\sqcup$ and the meet operation $\sqcap$. Each semigroup structure among these leads to a family of densely defined linear operators $W^{b}_{\lambda_u}$ acting on $\ell^2(V),$ which we refer to as weighted join operators at a given base point $b \in V_{\infty}$ with prescribed vertex $u \in V$. The extreme ends of this family are weighted join operators $W^{\mathsf{root}}_{\lambda_u}$ and weighted meet operators $W^{\infty}_{\lambda_u}$. In this paper, we systematically study these operators. We also present a more involved counter-part of weighted join operators on rootless directed trees. In both cases, the class of weighted join operators overlaps with the well-studied classes of complex Jordan operators and $n$-symmetric operators. An important half of this paper is devoted to the study of rank one extensions $W_{f, g}$ of weighted join operators, where $f \in \ell^2(V)$ and $g : V \to \mathbb C$ is unspecified. Unlike weighted join operators, these operators are not necessarily closed. We provide a couple of compatibility conditions involving the weight system $\lambda_u$ and $g$ to ensure closedness of $W_{f, g}$. We discuss the role of the Gelfand-triplet in the realization of the Hilbert space adjoint of $W_{f, g}$. Further, we describe various spectral parts of $W_{f, g}$ in terms of the weight system and the tree data. We also provide sufficient conditions for $W_{f, g}$ to be a sectorial operator. In case $\mathscr T$ is leafless, we characterize rank one extensions $W_{f, g}$, which admit compact resolvent.