Singular values, norms, and commutators

Let and Xi, i=1,…,n, be bounded linear operators on a separable Hilbert space such that Xi is compact for i=1,…,n. It is shown that the singular values of are dominated by those of , where ‖·‖ is the usual operator norm. Among other applications of this inequality, we prove that if A and B are self-adjoint operators such that a1⩽A⩽a2 and b1⩽B⩽b2 for some real numbers and b2, and if X is compact, then the singular values of the generalized commutator AX-XB are dominated by those of max(b2-a1,a2-b1)(X⊕X). This inequality proves a recent conjecture concerning the singular values of commutators. Several inequalities for norms of commutators are also given.