Common complements of two subspaces of a Hilbert space

In this paper we find a necessary and sufficient condition for two closed subspaces, and , of a Hilbert space to have a common complement, i.e. a subspace having trivial intersection with and and such that .Unlike the finite-dimensional case the condition is significantly more subtle than simple equalities of dimensions and codimensions, and non-trivial examples of subspaces without a common complement are possible.