Spectral analysis of singular ordinary differential operators with indefinite weights

In this paper we develop a perturbation approach to investigate spectral problems for singular ordinary differential operators with indefinite weight functions. We prove a general perturbation result on the local spectral properties of selfadjoint operators in Krein spaces which differ only by finitely many dimensions from the orthogonal sum of a fundamentally reducible operator and an operator with finitely many negative squares. This result is applied to singular indefinite Sturm–Liouville operators and higher order singular ordinary differential operators with indefinite weight functions.