Solvability and Fredholm Properties of Integral Equations on the Half-Line in Weighted Spaces

The solvability of integral equations of the form and the behaviour of the solution x at infinity are investigated. Conditions on k and on a weight function w are obtained which ensure that the integral operator K with kernel k is bounded as an operator on X_w, where X_w denotes the weighted space of those continuous functions defined on the half-line which are O(w(s)) as We also derive conditions on w and k which imply that the spectrum and essential spectrum of K on X_w are the same as on BC[0,). In particular, the results apply when when the integral equation is of Wiener-Hopf type. In this case we show that our results are particularly sharp.