Proximity and similarity of operators II

In this paper we continue the examination of the question of similarity of operators A and B begun in reference [3]. In that article, a similarity result was obtained based on a measure of closeness, or proximity, of the uniformly continuous semigroups etA and etB, t>0. The operators considered were elements of ℬ(ℋ), the algebra of bounded operators on a Hilbert space ℬWe now wish to relax this requirement and replace ℬ(ℋ) by a complex Banach algebra ℬ with unit I. In Section 2 we give a necessary condition for the similarity of A, B ∈ ℋ. We then give a condition sufficient to guarantee A and B are approximately similar (as defined in reference [5]). In Section 3 we restrict our attention to the case where ℋ = ℋ(ℋ). There we give a condition which guarantees A, B ∈ ℋ(ℋ) are intertwined by a Fredholm operator. This leads naturally into a discussion of proximity-similarity in the Calkin algebra si. This is the subject of Section 4. Following reference [7] we define a metric p on N(ℋ), the normal elements of ℋ We show (N(ℋ), p) is a complete metric space and that the unitary orbit of ℋ (N(ℋ) p)is the p-connected component of a in N (ℋ).