An Introduction to Models and Decompositions in Operator Theory

By a Hilbert-space operator we mean a bounded linear transformation be­ tween separable complex Hilbert spaces. Decompositions and models for Hilbert-space operators have been very active research topics in operator theory over the past three decades. The main motivation behind them is the in­ variant subspace problem: does every Hilbert-space operator have a nontrivial invariant subspace? This is perhaps the most celebrated open question in op­ erator theory. Its relevance is easy to explain: n