Borel functional calculus for a normal operator

For a normal operator $T$ with spectrum $K$, there is a contractive unital star-homomorphismwhere $L^{\infty }(K)$ denotes the bounded Borel functions. It is obtained by integrating against the projection-valued spectral measure of $T$.

For a bounded Borel measurable function $f$ and the projection-valued measure $E$ of a normal operator, the displayed set is the spectrum of an element of $f(T)$. Outside it, a bounded reciprocal away from a spectral-null set supplies the inverse. Inside it, unit vectors supported by the indicated arbitrarily small spectral sets make $f(T)-\lambda$ fail to be bounded below. The kernel of the calculus consists of functions satisfying $E(|f|>\epsilon )=0$ for every $\epsilon >0$, and its norm is the corresponding essential supremum. Ordinary pointwise range is insufficient: for multiplication by $t$ on $L^2[0,1]$, $1_{\{0\}}(T)=0$ even though the function takes the value $1$.

A bounded normal operator admits a normal square root even when no continuous scalar square root exists on its Banach algebra spectrum. Choose a bounded Borel branch $s(z)=|z{|}^{1/2}\exp (i\mathrm{Arg}(z)/2)$, with $s(0)=0$. The Borel functional calculus for a normal operator gives $S=s(T)$; multiplicativity gives $S^2=T$ and preservation of the adjoint gives $S^{\ast }S=S{S}^{\ast }=|s{|}^2(T)$. Unlike a positive square root, this square root need not be unique.

Normal operators $A_n$ on approximating subspaces converge to $A$ in the functional-calculus sense when $f(A_n)$ converges weakly to $f(A)$, after the natural projection and inclusion maps, for every continuous function $f$ on a common compact spectral set.