The Weiss conjecture on admissibility of observation operators for contraction semigroups

We prove the conjecture of George Weiss for contraction semigroups on Hilbert spaces, giving a characterization of infinite-time admissible observation functionals for a contraction semigroup, namely that such a functionalC is infinite-time admissible if and only if there is anM>0 such that for alls in the open right half-plane. HereA denotes the infinitesimal generator of the semigroup. The result provides a simultaneous generalization of several celebrated results from the theory of Hardy spaces involving Carleson measures and Hankel operators.