The Schur–Horn theorem for unbounded operators with discrete spectrum

Abstract

We characterize diagonals of unbounded self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space H that have only discrete spectrum, i.e., with empty essential spectrum. Our result extends the Schur-Horn theorem from a finite dimensional setting to an infinite dimensional Hilbert space, analogous to Kadison's theorem for orthogonal projections, Kaftal and Weiss' results for positive compact operators, and Bownik and Jasper's characterization for operators with finite spectrum. Furthermore, we show that if a symmetric unbounded operator E on H has a nondecreasing unbounded diagonal, then any sequence that weakly majorizes this diagonal is also a diagonal of E.