Shorting, parallel addition and form sums of nonnegative selfadjoint linear relations

Abstract: We extend the operations of shorting and parallel addition from the cone of bounded nonnegative selfadjoint operators in a Hilbert space to the set of all nonnegative selfadjoint linear relations. New properties of these operations and connections with the Cayley transforms are established. It is shown that for a pair of nonnegative selfadjoint linear relations there exist, in general, two arithmetic--harmonic means. Applications of the arithmetic, harmonic, and arithmetic--harmonic means to the theory of nonnegative selfadjoint extensions of nonnegative symmetric linear relations are given.