A Birman-Krein-Vishik-Grubb theory for sectorial operators

Abstract

We consider densely defined sectorial operators $A_\pm$ that can be written in the form $A_\pm=\pm iS+V$ with $\mathcal{D}(A_\pm)=\mathcal{D}(S)=\mathcal{D}(V)$, where both $S$ and $V\geq \varepsilon>0$ are assumed to be symmetric. We develop an analog to the Birmin-Krein-Vishik-Grubb (BKVG) theory of selfadjoint extensions of a given strictly positive symmetric operator, where we will construct all maximally accretive extensions $A_D$ of $A_+$ with the property that $\overline{A_+}\subset A_D\subset A_-^*$. Here, $D$ is an auxiliary operator from $\ker(A_-^*)$ to $\ker(A_+^*)$ that parametrizes the different extensions $A_D$. After this, we will give a criterion for when the quadratic form $\psi\mapsto\mbox{Re}\langle\psi,A_D\psi\rangle$ is closable and show that the selfadjoint operator $\widehat{V}$ that corresponds to the closure is an extension of $V$. We will show how $\widehat{V}$ depends on $D$, which --- using the classical BKVG-theory of selfadjoint extensions --- will allow us to define a partial order on the real parts of $A_D$ depending on $D$. Applications to second order ordinary differential operators are discussed.