Extending positive definiteness

Abstract

The main result of the paper gives criteria for extendibility of sesquilinear form-valued mappings defined on symmetric subsets of *-semigroups to positive definite ones. By specifying this we obtain new solutions of: * the truncated complex moment problem, * the truncated multidimensional trigonometric moment problem, * the truncated two-sided complex moment problem, as well as characterizations of unbounded subnormality and criteria for the existence of unitary power dilation.