Maximal Blaschke products (Q390993)

The authors consider the following extremal problem for functions in the space \(H^\infty\) of bounded analytic functions on the unit disk \(D\): Suppose that \((z_j)\) is a sequence in \(D\) and let \(N\) be the number of times that \(0\) appears in it. Find \[ \max\Big\{\text{Re} f^{(N+1)}(0):f\in H^\infty, \;f^\prime(z_j)=0,\; \sup|f|\leq 1\Big\}. \] The authors show that there exists a unique extremal function \(B\) which is an indestructible Blaschke product such that \(B^\prime\) vanishes exactly on the points \(z_j\) (counting multiplicities), \(B(0)=0\) and \(B^{(N+1)}(0)>0\). Recall that a Blaschke product \(B\) is called indestructible if for any conformal automorphism \(T\) of the unit disk, \(T\circ B\) is again a Blaschke product. The above result extends Nehari's classical generalization of the Schwarz lemma. The authors show that maximal Blaschke products share several properties with Bergman space inner functions and with finite Blaschke products. They prove various results to demonstrate these similarities. The proofs are based on the theory of conformal pseudometrics. The authors pose several open problems.