Can one give me an easy example of an operator $T$ on a Banach space which is injective and has closed range and such that $\|T^2\|\neq \|T\|^2$?
Operators bounded below
3
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banach-spaces
operator-theory
1 Answers
7
Consider $\begin{bmatrix}1&1\\0&1\end{bmatrix}$ as an operator on $\mathbb C^2$ with standard inner product.
(Note that in case the Banach space is a Hilbert space and $T$ is normal, the identity $\|T^2\|=\|T\|^2$ always does hold, so I just wrote down the first nonnormal invertible matrix I thought of, and it works.)
Added: Here's a rough way to see why matrices of the form $T=\begin{bmatrix}1&a\\0&1\end{bmatrix}$ will do the trick. When $|a|$ is very large, $\|T\|\approx |a|$, and $\|T^2\|\approx 2|a|$, while $\|T\|^2\approx |a|^2$ is much larger than $2|a|$.
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0+1 for explaining the rationale of "try a pathological case to see if it's a counterexample". – 2012-12-17