Essential spectra of self-adjoint relations under relatively compact perturbations

This paper is concerned with the stability of essential spectra of self-adjoint relations under relatively compact perturbation in Hilbert spaces. Relationships between relative boundedness and relative compactness of linear relations are established, and some necessary and sufficient conditions of relative compactness and relative boundedness of linear relations are given. It is shown that the essential spectra of self-adjoint relations are invariant under either relatively compact perturbation or a more general perturbation. The results obtained in the present paper generalize the corresponding results for operators to relations, and some of which weaken certain assumptions of the related existing results.