Form sums of nonnegative selfadjoint operators

Summary The sum of two unbounded nonnegative selfadjoint operators is a nonnegative operator which is not necessarily densely defined. In general its selfadjoint extensions exist in the sense of linear relations (multivalued operators). One of its nonnegative selfadjoint extensions is constructed via the form sum associated with A and B. Its relations to the Friedrichs and Krein--von Neumann extensions of A+Bare investigated. For this purpose, the one-to-one correspondence between densely defined closed semibounded forms and semibounded selfadjoint operators is extended to the case of nondensely defined semibounded forms by replacing semibounded selfadjoint operators by semibounded selfadjoint relations. In particular, the inequality between two closed nonnegative forms is shown to be equivalent to a similar inequality between the corresponding nonnegative selfadjoint relations.