Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Subadditivity, sublinearity, submultiplicativity, and other conditions are considered for spectra of pairs of operators on a Hilbert space. Sublinearity, for example, is a weakening of the well-known property $L$ and means $\sigma (A\,+\,\lambda B)\,\subseteq \,\sigma (A)\,+\,\lambda \sigma (B)$ for all scalars $\lambda$. The effect of these conditions is examined on commutativity, reducibility, and triangularizability of multiplicative semigroups of operators. A sample result is that sublinearity of spectra implies simultaneous triangularizability for a semigroup of compact operators.