Operators with smooth functional calculi

We introduce a class of (tuples of commuting) unbounded operators on a Banach space, admitting smooth functional calculi, that contains all operators of Helffer-Sj\"ostrand type and is closed under the action of smooth proper mappings. Moreover, the class is closed under tensor product of commuting operators. In general an operator in this class has no resolvent in the usual sense so the spectrum must be defined in terms of the functional calculus. We also consider invariant subspaces and spectral decompositions.