Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
In this paper we consider the problem of characterizing the variation of the spectrum of a holomorphic family of compact operators ƒ:G → KB(X), where G is an open subset of ℂ and X is a Banach space. The natural conjecture, which the author first heard in a lecture by Professor B. Aupetit, is that these spectra are characterized as those analytic multivalued functions which have as values null sequences. This is obviously a necessary condition, and we prove that this is also sufficient. It will be convenient to use the notation K(ℂ) for the set of compact non-empty subsets of the plane and K0(ℂ) for the subset of K(ℂ) consisting of null sequences.