What could be regarded as the beginning of a theory of commutators AB - BA of operators A and B on a Hilbert space, considered as a dis cipline in itself, goes back at least to the two papers of Weyl [3] {1928} and von Neumann [2] {1931} on quantum mechanics and the commuta tion relations occurring there. Here A and B were unbounded self-adjoint operators satisfying the relation AB - BA = iI, in some appropriate sense, and the problem was that of establishing the essential uniqueness of the pair A and B. The study of commutators of bounded operators on a Hilbert space has a more recent origin, which can probably be pinpointed as the paper of Wintner [6] {1947}. An investigation of a few related topics in the subject is the main concern of this brief monograph. The ensuing work considers commuting or "almost" commuting quantities A and B, usually bounded or unbounded operators on a Hilbert space, but occasionally regarded as elements of some normed space. An attempt is made to stress the role of the commutator AB - BA, and to investigate its properties, as well as those of its components A and B when the latter are subject to various restrictions. Some applica tions of the results obtained are made to quantum mechanics, perturba tion theory, Laurent and Toeplitz operators, singular integral trans formations, and Jacobi matrices.

The book concisely presents the fundamental aspects of the theory of operators on Hilbert spaces. The topics covered include functional calculus and spectral theorems, compact operators, trace class and Hilbert-Schmidt operators, self-adjoint extensions of symmetric operators, and one-parameter groups of operators. The exposition of the material on unbounded operators is based on a novel tool, called the z-transform, which provides a way to encode full information about unbounded operators in bounded ones, hence making many technical aspects of the theory less involved.

This self-contained work on Hilbert space operators takes a problem-solving approach to the subject, combining theoretical results with a wide variety of exercises that range from the straightforward to the state-of-the-art. Complete solutions to all problems are provided. The text covers the basics of bounded linear operators on a Hilbert space and gradually progresses to more advanced topics in spectral theory and quasireducible operators. Written in a motivating and rigorous style, the work has few prerequisites beyond elementary functional analysis, and will appeal to graduate students and researchers in mathematics, physics, engineering, and related disciplines.