A class of contractions in Hilbert space and applications

We characterize the bounded linear operators T in Hilbert space which satisfy T = βI + (1 - β)S where β ∈ (0,1) and S is a contraction. The characterizations include a quadratic form inequality, and a domination condition of the discrete semigroup (T[sup]n)n=1,2,... by the continuous semigroup (e[sup]-t(I-T)t≥o. Moreover, we give a stronger quadratic form inequality which ensures that sup{n||T[sup]n - T[sup]n+1 ||: n = 1, 2,...} < ∞. The results apply to large classes of Markov operators on countable spaces or on locally compact groups.