A First Course in Spectral Theory

The central topic of this book is the spectral theory of bounded and unbounded self-adjoint operators on Hilbert spaces. After introducing the necessary prerequisites in measure theory and functional analysis, the exposition focuses on operator theory and especially the structure of self-adjoint operators. These can be viewed as infinite-dimensional analogues of Hermitian matrices; the infinite-dimensional setting leads to a richer theory which goes beyond eigenvalues and eigenvectors and studies self-adjoint operators in the language of spectral measures and the Borel functional calculus.

The main approach to spectral theory adopted in the book is to present it as the interplay between three main classes of objects: self-adjoint operators, their spectral measures, and Herglotz functions, which are complex analytic functions mapping the upper half-plane to itself. Self-adjoint operators include many important classes of recurrence and differential operators; the later part of this book is dedicated to two of the most studied classes, Jacobi operators and one-dimensional Schrödinger operators.

This text is intended as a course textbook or for independent reading for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Prerequisites are linear algebra, a first course in analysis including metric spaces, and for parts of the book, basic complex analysis. Necessary results from measure theory and from the theory of Banach and Hilbert spaces are presented in the first three chapters of the book. Each chapter concludes with a number of helpful exercises.