Partial isometry

An operator $U$ on a Hilbert space is a partial isometry when it is isometric on $(\ker U{)}^{\perp }$. Equivalently, $U^{\ast }U$ is the orthogonal projection onto this initial space.

Every bounded operator on a Hilbert space has a polar decomposition $T=U|T|$, where $|T|=(T^{\ast }T{)}^{1/2}$ and $U$ is a partial isometry with $\ker U=\ker T$. On $\mathrm{im}|T|$, it is defined by $U(|T|x)=Tx$.