We study the homogeneous Riemann-Hilbert problem with a vanishing scalar-valued continuous coefficient. We characterize non-existence of nontrivial solutions in the case where the coefficient has its values along several rays starting from the origin. As a consequence, some results on injectivity and existence of eigenvalues of Toeplitz operators in Hardy spaces are obtained.

Let $M_{m,n}$ be the space of all complex m × n matrices. The generalized unit disc in $M_{m,n}$ is >br>    $R_{m,n}=Z\in M_{m,n}:I^{\left(m\right)}-ZZ*ispositivedefinite$. Here $I^{\left(m\right)}\in M_{m,m}$ is the unit matrix. If 1 ≤ p < ∞ and α > -1, then $L_{\alpha }^p\left(R_{m,n}\right)$ is defined to be the space $L^p{R}_{m,n};{\left[det(I^{\left(m\right)}-ZZ*)\right]}^{\alpha }d{\mu }_{m,n}\left(Z\right)$, where ${\mu }_{m,n}$ is the Lebesgue measure in $M_{m,n}$, and $H_{\alpha }^p\left(R_{m,n}\right)\subset L_{\alpha }^p\left(R_{m,n}\right)$ is the subspace of holomorphic functions. In [8,9] M. M. Djrbashian and A. H. Karapetyan proved that, if $Re\beta >(\alpha +1)/p-1$ (for 1 < p < ∞) and Re β ≥ α (for p = 1), then     $f\left(\right)=T_{m,n}^{\beta }\left(f\right)\left(\right),\in R_{m,n},$where $T_{m,n}^{\beta }$ is the integral operator defined by (0.13)-(0.14). In the present paper, given 1 ≤ p <...

The paper is devoted to an integral equation algorithm for studying the scattering of plane waves by multilayer diffraction gratings under oblique incidence. The scattering problem is described by a system of Helmholtz equations with piecewise constant coefficients in ${ℝ}^2$ coupled by special transmission conditions at the interfaces between different layers. Boundary integral methods lead to a system of singular integral equations, containing at least two equations for each interface. To deal with...