Quaternionic triangular linear operators

Abstract

Triangular operators are an essential tool in the study of nonselfadjoint operators that appear in different fields with a wide range of applications. Although the development of a quaternionic counterpart for this theory started at the beginning of this century, the lack of a proper spectral theory combined with problems caused by the underlying noncommutative structure prevented its real development for a long time. In this paper, we give criteria for a quaternionic linear operator to have a triangular representation, namely, under which conditions such operators can be represented as a sum of a diagonal operator with a Volterra operator. To this effect, we investigate quaternionic Volterra operators based on the quaternionic spectral theory arising from the S‐spectrum. This allow us to obtain conditions when a non‐selfadjoint operator admits a triangular representation.