On the approximation of spectra of linear operators on Hilbert spaces

We present several new techniques for approximating spectra of linear operators (not necessarily bounded) on an infinite-dimensional, separable Hilbert space. Our approach is to take well-known techniques from finite-dimensional matrix analysis and show how they can be generalized to an infinite-dimensional setting to provide approximations of spectra of elements in a large class of operators. We conclude by proposing a solution to the general problem of approximating the spectrum of an arbitrary bounded operator by introducing the n-pseudospectrum and argue how that can be used as an approximation to the spectrum. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.