This monograph contains an exposition of the foundations of the spectral theory of polynomial operator pencils acting in a Hilbert space. Spectral problems for polynomial pencils have attracted a steady interest in the last 35 years, mainly because they arise naturally in such diverse areas of mathematical physics as differential equations and boundary value problems, controllable systems, the theory of oscillations and waves, elasticity theory, and hydromechanics. In this book, the author devotes most of his attention to the fundamental results of Keldysh on multiple completeness of the eigen.

This monograph contains an exposition of the foundations of the spectral theory of polynomial operator pencils acting in a Hilbert space. Spectral problems for polynomial pencils have attracted a steady interest in the last 35 years, mainly because they arise naturally in such diverse areas of mathematical physics as differential equations and boundary value problems, controllable systems, the theory of oscillations and waves, elasticity theory, and hydromechanics. In this book, the author devotes most of his attention to the fundamental results of Keldysh on multiple completeness of the eigenvectors and associate vectors of a pencil, and on the asymptotic behavior of its eigenvalues and generalizations of these results. The author also presents various theorems on spectral factorization of pencils which grew out of known results of M. G. Krein and Heinz Langer. A large portion of the book involves the theory of selfadjoint pencils, an area having numerous applications. Intended for mathematicians, researchers in mechanics, and theoretical physicists interested in spectral theory and its applications, the book assumes a familiarity with the fundamentals of spectral theory of operators acting in a Hilbert space.

A brief and accessible introduction to the spectral theory of linear second order elliptic differential operators. By introducing vital topics of abstract functional analysis where necessary, and using clear and simple proofs, the book develops an elegant presentation of the theory while integrating applications of basic real world problems involving the Laplacian. Suitable for use as a self-contained introduction for beginners or as a one-semester student text; contains some 25 examples and 60 exercises, most with detailed hints.

The theoretical part of this monograph examines the distribution of the spectrum of operator polynomials, focusing on quadratic operator polynomials with discrete spectra. The second part is devoted to applications. Standard spectral problems in Hilbert spaces are of the form A-λI for an operator A, and self-adjoint operators are of particular interest and importance, both theoretically and in terms of applications. A characteristic feature of self-adjoint operators is that their spectra are real, and many spectral problems in theoretical physics and engineering can be described by using them. However, a large class of problems, in particular vibration problems with boundary conditions depending on the spectral parameter, are represented by operator polynomials that are quadratic in the eigenvalue parameter and whose coefficients are self-adjoint operators. The spectra of such operator polynomials are in general no more real, but still exhibit certain patterns. The distribution of these spectra is the main focus of the present volume. For some classes of quadratic operator polynomials, inverse problems are also considered. The connection between the spectra of such quadratic operator polynomials and generalized Hermite-Biehler functions is discussed in detail. Many applications are thoroughly investigated, such as the Regge problem and damped vibrations of smooth strings, Stieltjes strings, beams, star graphs of strings and quantum graphs. Some chapters summarize advanced background material, which is supplemented with detailed proofs. With regard to the reader’s background knowledge, only the basic properties of operators in Hilbert spaces and well-known results from complex analysis are assumed.

This volume is dedicated to Heinz Langer, a leading expert in spectral analysis and its applications, in particular to operators in spaces with an indefinite metric, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The book begins with his biography and list of publications. It contains a selection of research papers, most of which are devoted to spectral analysis of operators or operator pencils with applications to ordinary and partial differential equations. Other papers deal with time-varying systems, interpolation and factorization problems, and topics from mathematical physics. About half of the papers contain further developments in the theory of operators in spaces with an indefinite metric and treat new applications. The book is of interest to a wide audience of pure and applied mathematicians.

Bringing together 18 chapters written by leading experts in dynamical systems, operator theory, partial differential equations, and solid and fluid mechanics, this book presents state-of-the-art approaches to a wide spectrum of new and challenging stability problems. Nonlinear Physical Systems: Spectral Analysis, Stability and Bifurcations focuses on problems of spectral analysis, stability and bifurcations arising in the nonlinear partial differential equations of modern physics. Bifurcations and stability of solitary waves, geometrical optics stability analysis in hydro- and magnetohydrodynamics, and dissipation-induced instabilities are treated with the use of the theory of Krein and Pontryagin space, index theory, the theory of multi-parameter eigenvalue problems and modern asymptotic and perturbative approaches. Each chapter contains mechanical and physical examples, and the combination of advanced material and more tutorial elements makes this book attractive for both experts and non-specialists keen to expand their knowledge on modern methods and trends in stability theory. Contents 1. Surprising Instabilities of Simple Elastic Structures, Davide Bigoni, Diego Misseroni, Giovanni Noselli and Daniele Zaccaria. 2. WKB Solutions Near an Unstable Equilibrium and Applications, Jean-François Bony, Setsuro Fujiié, Thierry Ramond and Maher Zerzeri, partially supported by French ANR project NOSEVOL. 3. The Sign Exchange Bifurcation in a Family of Linear Hamiltonian Systems, Richard Cushman, Johnathan Robbins and Dimitrii Sadovskii. 4. Dissipation Effect on Local and Global Fluid-Elastic Instabilities, Olivier Doaré. 5. Tunneling, Librations and Normal Forms in a Quantum Double Well with a Magnetic Field, Sergey Yu. Dobrokhotov and Anatoly Yu. Anikin. 6. Stability of Dipole Gap Solitons in Two-Dimensional Lattice Potentials, Nir Dror and Boris A. Malomed. 7. Representation of Wave Energy of a Rotating Flow in Terms of the Dispersion Relation, Yasuhide Fukumoto, Makoto Hirota and Youichi Mie. 8. Determining the Stability Domain of Perturbed Four-Dimensional Systems in 1:1 Resonance, Igor Hoveijn and Oleg N. Kirillov. 9. Index Theorems for Polynomial Pencils, Richard Kollár and Radomír Bosák. 10. Investigating Stability and Finding New Solutions in Conservative Fluid Flows Through Bifurcation Approaches, Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz and Charles H.K. Williamson. 11. Evolution Equations for Finite Amplitude Waves in Parallel Shear Flows, Sherwin A. Maslowe. 12. Continuum Hamiltonian Hopf Bifurcation I, Philip J. Morrison and George I. Hagstrom. 13. Continuum Hamiltonian Hopf Bifurcation II, George I. Hagstrom and Philip J. Morrison. 14. Energy Stability Analysis for a Hybrid Fluid-Kinetic Plasma Model, Philip J. Morrison, Emanuele Tassi and Cesare Tronci. 15. Accurate Estimates for the Exponential Decay of Semigroups with Non-Self-Adjoint Generators, Francis Nier. 16. Stability Optimization for Polynomials and Matrices, Michael L. Overton. 17. Spectral Stability of Nonlinear Waves in KdV-Type Evolution Equations, Dmitry E. Pelinovsky. 18. Unfreezing Casimir Invariants: Singular Perturbations Giving Rise to Forbidden Instabilities, Zensho Yoshida and Philip J. Morrison. About the Authors Oleg N. Kirillov has been a Research Fellow at the Magneto-Hydrodynamics Division of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany since 2011. His research interests include non-conservative stability problems of structural mechanics and physics, perturbation theory of non-self-adjoint boundary eigenvalue problems, magnetohydrodynamics, friction-induced oscillations, dissipation-induced instabilities and non-Hermitian problems of optics and microwave physics. Since 2013 he has served as an Associate Editor for the journal Frontiers in Mathematical Physics. Dmitry E. Pelinovsky has been Professor at McMaster University in Canada since 2000. His research profile includes work with nonlinear partial differential equations, discrete dynamical systems, spectral theory, integrable systems, and numerical analysis. He served as the guest editor of the special issue of the journals Chaos in 2005 and Applicable Analysis in 2010. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulations. This book is devoted to the problems of spectral analysis, stability and bifurcations arising from the nonlinear partial differential equations of modern physics. Leading experts in dynamical systems, operator theory, partial differential equations, and solid and fluid mechanics present state-of-the-art approaches to a wide spectrum of new challenging stability problems. Bifurcations and stability of solitary waves, geometrical optics stability analysis in hydro- and magnetohydrodynamics and dissipation-induced instabilities will be treated with the use of the theory of Krein and Pontryagin space, index theory, the theory of multi-parameter eigenvalue problems and modern asymptotic and perturbative approaches. All chapters contain mechanical and physical examples and combine both tutorial and advanced sections, making them attractive both to experts in the field and non-specialists interested in knowing more about modern methods and trends in stability theory.

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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This book discusses the important aspects of spectral theory, in particular, the completeness of generalised eigenvectors, Riesz bases, semigroup theory, families of analytic operators, and Gribov operator acting in the Bargmann space. Recent mathematical developments of perturbed non-self-adjoint operators are discussed with the completeness of the space of generalized eigenvectors, bases on Hilbert and Banach spaces and asymptotic behavior of the eigenvalues of these operators. Most results in the book are motivated by physical problems, such as the perturbation method for sound radiation by a vibrating plate in a light fluid, Gribov operator in Bargmann space and other applications in mathematical physics and mechanics. This book is intended for students, researchers in the field of spectral theory of linear non self-adjoint operators, pure analysts and mathematicians.

The asymptotic distribution of eigenvalues of self-adjoint differential operators in the high-energy limit, or the semi-classical limit, is a classical subject going back to H. Weyl of more than a century ago. In the last decades there has been a renewed interest in non-self-adjoint differential operators which have many subtle properties such as instability under small perturbations. Quite remarkably, when adding small random perturbations to such operators, the eigenvalues tend to distribute according to Weyl's law (quite differently from the distribution for the unperturbed operators in analytic cases). A first result in this direction was obtained by M. Hager in her thesis of 2005. Since then, further general results have been obtained, which are the main subject of the present book. Additional themes from the theory of non-self-adjoint operators are also treated. The methods are very much based on microlocal analysis and especially on pseudodifferential operators. The reader will find a broad field with plenty of open problems.

The Workshop on Operator Theory and Boundary Eigenvalue Problems was held at the Technical University, Vienna, Austria, July 27 to 30, 1993. It was the seventh workshop in the series of IWOTA (International Workshops on Operator Theory and Applications). The main topics at the workshop were interpolation problems and analytic matrix functions, operator theory in spaces with indefinite scalar products, boundary value problems for differential and functional-differential equations and systems theory and control. The workshop covered different aspects, starting with abstract operator theory up to contrete applications. The papers in these proceedings provide an accurate cross section of the lectures presented at the workshop. This book will be of interest to a wide group of pure and applied mathematicians.