When does the Weyl-von Neumann Theorem hold?

Abstract

A famous theorem due to Weyl and von Neumann asserts that two bounded self-adjoint operators are unitarily equivalent modulo the compacts, if and only if their essential spectrum agree. The above theorem does not hold for unbounded operators. Nevertheless, there exist closed subsets $M$ of $\mathbb{R}$ on which the Weyl--von Neumann Theorem hold: all (not necessarily bounded) self-adjoint operators with essential spectrum $M$ are unitarily equivalent modulo the compacts. In this paper, we determine exactly which $M$ satisfies this property.