Orthogonal complement to range of a bounded operator closed iff bounded

functional-analysisorthogonality

Let $H,K$ be Hilbert spaces.

Suppose $T\in B(H,K)$.

Consider the restriction map of $T$, $T': \mathcal{N}^{\perp}(T) \rightarrow \mathcal{R}(T) $ .

Show that $\mathcal{R}(T)$ is closed if and only if $T'$ is bounded below.

Atempt:

Suppose $\mathcal{R}(T)$ is closed, now I want to use the bounded inverse theorem. But I'm not sure how to show that $\mathcal{N}^{\perp}(T)$ and $\mathcal{R}(T)$ are Banach. I feel like that's where the closedness of $\mathcal{R}(T)$ is used.

Now suppose $T'$ is bounded below. I know that $T'$ is a bijection. So the inverse exists. I also know that from here $T'^{-1}$ is also bounded below. So by continuity, $\mathcal{R}(T)= T'(\mathcal{N}^{\perp}(T)) = (T'^{-1})^{-1}(\mathcal{N}^{\perp}(T)) $ is closed.

Could someone please help me with the first part? And please let me know if you see a problem with second part.

Best Answer

A closed subspace of Banach space is always a Banach space and the orthogonal complement of any set is always closed. So the only thing you have to check is that $T'$ is a bijection.

If $T'x=0$ for some $x \in \mathcal N(T)^{\perp}$ then $x \in \mathcal N(T) \cap \mathcal N(T)^{\perp} =\{0\}$ so $x=0$. So $T'$ is injective.

Let $y \in \mathcal R{(T)}$. Then $y=Tx$ for some $x$ and we can write $x=x_1+x_2$ where $x_1 \in \mathcal N(T)$ and $x_2 \in \mathcal N(T)^{\perp}$. This gives $y=T'x_2$ so $T'$ is surjective.

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