Recently, the invertibility of linear combinations of two idempotents has been studied by several authors. Let P and Q be idempotents in a Banach algebra. It was shown that the invertibility of P+ Q is equivalent to that of aP+ bQ for nonzero a, b with a+ b= 0. In this note, we obtain a similar result for square zero operators and those operators satisfying x2= dx for some scalar d. More generally, we show that if P, Q satisfy a quadratic polynomial (x c)(x d) then the linear combination aP+ bQ c (a+ b) being invertible or Fredholm (and the index) is independent of the choice of the nonzero scalars a, b. However, this is not the case when P and Q are involutions, unitaries, partial isometries, k-potents (k 3) and other nilpotents, as counterexamples are provided.

We perform quantitative spectral analysis of the self-adjoint Dirichlet Laplacian \mathsf {H} on an unbounded, radially symmetric (generalized) parabolic layer \mathsf {H} . It was known before that \mathsf {H} has an infinite number of eigenvalues below the threshold of its essential spectrum. In the present paper, we find the discrete spectrum asymptotics for \mathsf {H} by means of a consecutive reduction to the analogous asymptotic problem for an effective one-dimensional Schrdinger operator on the half-line with the potential the behaviour of which far away from the origin is determined by the geometry of the layer \mathsf {H} at infinity.

We study the following generalized quasivariational inequality problem: given a closed convex set <i>X</i> in a normed space <i>E</i> with the dual <i>E</i> ^*, a multifunction \Phi :Xightarrow 2^{E^{*}} and a multifunction :<i>X</i>2^<i>X</i>, find a point \Phi :Xightarrow 2^{E^{*}} such that \Phi :Xightarrow 2^{E^{*}} , \Phi :Xightarrow 2^{E^{*}} . We prove some existence theorems in which may be discontinuous, <i>X</i> may be unbounded, and is not assumed to be Hausdorff lower semicontinuous.

A not necessarily continuous, linear or multiplicative function from an algebra A into itself is called a 2-local automorphism if agrees with an automorphism of A at each pair of points in A. In this paper, we study when a 2-local automorphism of a C-algebra, or a standard operator algebra on a locally convex space, is an automorphism.

Let <i>X, Y</i> be compact Hausdorff spaces and <i>E, F</i> be Banach spaces. A linear map <i>T: C(X, E) C(Y, F)</i> is separating if <i>Tf, Tg</i> have disjoint cozeroes whenever <i>f, g</i> have disjoint cozeroes. We prove that a biseparating linear bijection <i>T</i> (that is, <i>T</i> and <i>T</i>^-1 are separating) is a weighted composition operator <i>Tf = h f</i> o . Here, <i>h</i> is a function from <i>Y</i> into the set of invertible linear operators from <i>E</i> onto <i>F</i>, and , is a homeomorphism from <i>Y</i> onto <i>X</i>. We also show that <i>T</i> is bounded if and only if <i>h(y)</i> is a bounded operator from <i>E</i> onto <i>F</i> for all <i>y</i> in <i>Y</i>. In this case, <i>h</i> is continuous with respect to the strong operator topology.