Semi-bounded differential operators, contractive semigroups and beyond

This book examines the conditions for the semi-boundedness of partial differential operators, which are interpreted in different ways. For example, today we know a great deal about L²-semibounded differential and pseudodifferential operators, although their complete characterization in analytic terms still poses difficulties, even for fairly simple operators. In contrast, until recently almost nothing was known about analytic characterizations of semi-boundedness for differential operators in other Hilbert function spaces and in Banach function spaces. This book works to address that gap. As such, various types of semi-boundedness are considered and a number of relevant conditions which are either necessary and sufficient or best possible in a certain sense are presented. The majority of the results reported on are the authors' own contributions.--