On a Subspace Perturbation Problem

Abstract

We discuss the problem of perturbation of spectral subspaces for linear self-adjoint operators on a separable Hilbert space. Let $A$ and $V$ be bounded self-adjoint operators. Assume that the spectrum of $A$ consists of two disjoint parts $\sigma$ and $\Sigma$ such that $d=\text{dist}(\sigma, \Sigma)>0$. We show that the norm of the difference of the spectral projections $\EE_A(\sigma)$ and $\EE_{A+V}\big (\{\lambda | \dist(\lambda, \sigma)$ $<d/2\}\big)$ for $A$ and $A+V$ is less then one whenever either (i) $\|V\|<\frac{2}{2+\pi}d$ or (ii) $\|V\|<{1/2}d$ and certain assumptions on the mutual disposition of the sets $\sigma$ and $\Sigma$ are satisfied.