Six papers deal with interrelated problems of modern operator theory, complex analysis, and system theory at a level accessible to advanced mathematicians and engineers. They provide a cross-section of recent advances in the understanding of the theory of time-varying systems and time-varying of analogues of interpolation problems. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Complex function theory and linear algebra provide much of the basic mathematics needed by engineers engaged in numerical computations, signal processing or control. The transfer function of a linear time invariant system is a function of the complex vari able s or z and it is analytic in a large part of the complex plane. Many important prop erties of the system for which it is a transfer function are related to its analytic prop erties. On the other hand, engineers often encounter small and large matrices which describe (linear) maps between physically important quantities. In both cases similar mathematical and computational problems occur: operators, be they transfer functions or matrices, have to be simplified, approximated, decomposed and realized. Each field has developed theory and techniques to solve the main common problems encountered. Yet, there is a large, mysterious gap between complex function theory and numerical linear algebra. For example, complex function theory has solved the problem to find analytic functions of minimal complexity and minimal supremum norm that approxi e. g. , as optimal mate given values at strategic points in the complex plane. They serve approximants for a desired behavior of a system to be designed. No similar approxi mation theory for matrices existed until recently, except for the case where the matrix is (very) close to singular.

Discrete-time systems arise as a matter of course in modelling biological or economic processes. For systems and control theory they are of major importance, particularly in connection with digital control applications. If sampling is performed in order to control periodic processes, almost periodic systems are obtained. This is a strong motivation to investigate the discrete-time systems with time-varying coefficients. This research monograph contains a study of discrete-time nodes, the discrete counterpart of the theory elaborated by Bart, Gohberg and Kaashoek for the continuous case, discrete-time Lyapunov and Riccati equations, discrete-time Hamiltonian systems in connection with input-output operators and associated Hankel and Toeplitz operators. All these tools aim to solve the problems of stabilization and attenuation of disturbances in the framework of H2- and H-control theory. The book is the first of its kind to be devoted to these topics and consists mainly of original, recently obtained results.

This volume presents the refereed proceedings of the Conference in Operator The ory in Honour of Moshe Livsic 80th Birthday, held June 29 to July 4, 1997, at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer-Sheva, Israel) and at the Weizmann In stitute of Science (Rehovot, Israel). The volume contains papers in operator theory and its applications (understood in a very wide sense), many of them reflecting, 1 directly or indirectly, a profound impact of the work of Moshe Livsic. Moshe (Mikhail Samuilovich) Livsic was born on July 4, 1917, in the small town of Pokotilova near Uman, in the province of Kiev in the Ukraine; his family moved to Odessa when he was four years old. In 1933 he enrolled in the Department of Physics and Mathematics at the Odessa State University, where he became a student of M. G. Krein and an active participant in Krein's seminar - one of the centres where the ideas and methods of functional analysis and operator theory were being developed. Besides M. G. Krein, M. S. Livsic was strongly influenced B. Va. Levin, an outstanding specialist in the theory of analytic functions. A by deep understanding of operator theory as well as function theory and a penetrating search of connections between the two, were to become one of the landmarks of M. S. Livsic's work. M. S. Livsic defended his Ph. D.

The class of Schur functions consists of analytic functions on the unit disk that are bounded by $1$. The Schur algorithm associates to any such function a sequence of complex constants, which is much more useful than the Taylor coefficients. There is a generalization to matrix-valued functions and a corresponding algorithm. These generalized Schur functions have important applications to the theory of linear operators, to signal processing and control theory, and to other areas of engineering. In this book, Alpay looks at matrix-valued Schur functions and their applications from the unifying point of view of spaces with reproducing kernels. This approach is used here to study the relationship between the modeling of time-invariant dissipative linear systems and the theory of linear operators. The inverse scattering problem plays a key role in the exposition. The point of view also allows for a natural way to tackle more general cases, such as nonstationary systems, non-positive metrics, and pairs of commuting nonself-adjoint operators. This is the English translation of a volume originally published in French by the Societe Mathematique de France. Translated by Stephen S. Wilson.

On November 12-14, 1997 a workshop was held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on the occasion of the sixtieth birthday ofM. A. Kaashoek. The present volume contains the proceedings of this workshop. The workshop was attended by 44 participants from all over the world: partici pants came from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine and the USA. The atmosphere at the workshop was very warm and friendly. There where 21 plenary lectures, and each lecture was followed by a lively discussion. The workshop was supported by: the Vakgroep Wiskunde of the Vrije Univer siteit, the department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Vrije Univer siteit, the Stichting VU Computer Science & Mathematics Research Centre, the Thomas Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics, and the department of Economics of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The organizers would like to take this opportunity to express their gratitude for the support. Without it the workshop would not have been so successful as it was. Table of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Photograph of M. A. Kaashoek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Curriculum Vitae of M. A. Kaashoek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv List of Publications of M. A. Kaashoek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix l. Gohberg Opening Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi H. Bart, A. C. M. Ran and H. I. Woerdeman Personal Reminiscences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv V. Adamyan and R. Mennicken On the Separation of Certain Spectral Components of Selfadjoint Operator Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. Conditions for the Separation of Spectral Components . . . . . . . 4 3. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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