Boundary relations and their Weyl families

The concepts of boundary relations and the corresponding Weyl families are introduced. Let be a closed symmetric linear operator or, more generally, a closed symmetric relation in a Hilbert space , let be an auxiliary Hilbert space, let

and let be defined analogously. A unitary relation from the Krein space to the Krein space is called a boundary relation for the adjoint if . The corresponding Weyl family is defined as the family of images of the defect subspaces , , under . Here need not be surjective and is even allowed to be multi-valued. While this leads to fruitful connections between certain classes of holomorphic families of linear relations on the complex Hilbert space and the class of unitary relations , it also generalizes the notion of so-called boundary value space and essentially extends the applicability of abstract boundary mappings in the connection of boundary value problems. Moreover, these new notions yield, for instance, the following realization theorem: every -valued maximal dissipative (for ) holomorphic family of linear relations is the Weyl family of a boundary relation, which is unique up to unitary equivalence if certain minimality conditions are satisfied. Further connections between analytic and spectral theoretical properties of Weyl families and geometric properties of boundary relations are investigated, and some applications are given.