Noncircular elliptic discs as numerical ranges of nilpotent operators

Abstract

We show that (1) if A is a nonzero quasinilpotent operator with ran A(n) closed for some n >= 1, then its numerical range W(A) contains 0 in its interior and has a differentiable boundary, and (2) a noncircular elliptic disc can be the numerical range of a nilpotent operator with nilpotency 3 on an infinite-dimensional separable space. (1) is a generalization of the known result for nonzero nilpotent operators, and (2) is in contrast to the finite-dimensional case, where the only elliptic discs which are the numerical ranges of nilpotent finite matrices are the circular ones centred at the origin.