Cowen–Douglas operators and the third of Halmos’ ten problems

Let T be a bounded linear operator on a complex separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space ℌ. T is called intransitive if it leaves invariant spaces other than 0 or the whole space ℌ; otherwise it is transitive. In 1970, P. R. Halmos raised ten open problems on operator theory [15]. The third problem of Halmos is the following: if an intransitive operator T has an inverse, is its inverse also intransitive? If we do not require T to be bounded, then D.Hadwin constructed a counterexample to this question. In the past more than 50 years, nine of Halmos’ ten problems were answered, but only the third one has made little progress for bounded operators. In this paper, we establish a set of technical systems with the help of Cowen–Douglas operators and spectral analysis. We give an affirmative answer to this problem under certain spectral conditions, which make essential progress in the research of Halmos’ third problem. As the first application, we show that for an invertible hyponormal operator T, if T⁻¹ is intransitive and intσ(T⁻¹)^∧ is not connected, then T is also intransitive. As the second application, we show that if T⁻¹ has a proper strictly cyclic invariant subspace and there exists a bounded open set Ω which is a connected component of ρ(T⁻¹) such that \(\Omega\cap\cal{U}_{0}=\varnothing\) $$\mathrm{\Omega }\cap {\mathcal{U}}_0=\varnothing$$ , where \(\cal{U}_{0}\) $${\mathcal{U}}_0$$ is the connected component of int(σ(T⁻¹)^∧) containing 0, then T is intransitive.