Weak Paveability and the Kadison-Singer Problem

The Kadison-Singer Problem (K-S) has expanded since 1959 to a very large number of equivalent problems in various fields. In the present paper we will introduce the notion of weak paveability for positive elements of a von Neumann algebra M. This new formulation implies the traditional version of paveability iff K-S is affirmed. We show that the set of weakly paveable positive elements of $M^+$ is open and norm dense in $M^+$. Finally, we show that to affirm K-S it suffices to show that projections with compact diagonal are weakly paveable. Therefore weakly paveable matrices will either contain a counterexample, or else weak paveability must be an easier route to affirming K-S.