On Self-Adjoint Factorization of Operators

The main result of this paper is that every normal operator on an infinitedimensional (complex) Hilbert space ℋ is the product of four self-adjoint operators; our Theorem 4 is an actually stronger result. A large class of normal operators will be given which cannot be expressed as the product of three self-adjoint operators. This work was motivated by a well-known resul t of Halmos and Kakutani (3) that every unitary operator on ℋ is the product of four symmetries, i.e., operators that are self-adjoint and unitary. 1. By “operator” we shall mean bounded linear operator. The space ℋ will be infinite-dimensional (separable or non-separable) unless otherwise specified. We shall denote the class of self-adjoint operators on ℋ by and that of symmetries by .