We carry out an in-depth study of some domination and smoothing properties of linear operators and of their role within the theory of eventually positive operator semigroups. On the one hand, we prove that, on many important function spaces, they imply compactness properties. On the other hand, we show that these conditions can be omitted in a number of Perron–Frobenius type spectral theorems. We furthermore prove a Kreĭn–Rutman type theorem on the existence of positive eigenvectors and eigenfunctionals under certain eventual positivity conditions.
