Invariant subspaces of idempotents on Hilbert spaces

Abstract

In the setting of operators on Hilbert spaces, we prove that every quasinilpotent operator has a non-trivial closed invariant subspace if and only if every pair of idempotents with a quasinilpotent commutator has a non-trivial common closed invariant subspace. We also present a geometric characterization of invariant subspaces of idempotents and classify operators that are essentially idempotent.