POSINORMAL TERRACED MATRICES

This paper is a study of some properties of a collection of bounded linear operators resulting from terraced matrices M acting through multiplication on ${\ell}^2$; the term terraced matrix refers to a lower triangular infinite matrix with constant row segments. Sufficient conditions are found for M to be posinormal, meaning that $MM^*=M^*PM$ for some positive operator P on ${\ell}^2$; these conditions lead to new sufficient conditions for the hyponormality of M. Sufficient conditions are also found for the adjoint $M^*$ to be posinormal, and it is observed that, unless M is essentially trivial, $M^*$ cannot be hyponormal. A few examples are considered that exhibit special behavior.