On the structure of contraction operators. III (Q1123366)

This paper is the third in a series [[I] J. Funct. Anal. 76, 1-29 (1988; Zbl 0641.47012); [II] ibid. 76, 30-55 (1988; Zbl 0641.47013)] devoted to proving, via the dual algebra technique, the existence of nontrivial invariant subspaces for contractions on a complex, separable Hilbert space. It culminates in the result that every contraction whose spectrum contains the unit circle is either reflexive or has a nontrivial hyperinvariant subspace, thus generalizing the main result in [II], where only the existence of nontrivial invariant subspaces for such operators is proved. Recall that for any operator T on H, \({\mathcal A}_ T\) denotes the weak-* closed algebra generated by T and I and \({\mathcal Q}_ T=C_ 1/{\mathcal A}^{\perp}_ T\) its predual, where \(C_ 1\) is the Banach space of trace-class operators with the trace norm. Then \({\mathcal A}_ T\) is the dual space of \({\mathcal Q}_ T\) under the pairing \(<A,[L]>=tr(AL)\), where \(A\in {\mathcal A}_ T\), \(L\in C_ 1\) and [L] denotes the coset in \({\mathcal Q}_ T\) containing L. A denotes the class of absolutely continuous contractions T for which \(\| \phi (T)\| =\| \phi \|_{\infty}\) for any \(\phi \in H^{\infty}\) and, for any m and n with \(1\leq m\), \(n\leq \aleph_ 0\), \(A_{m,n}\) is the class of operators in A with the property that for any family \(\{[L_{ij}]\}_{0\leq i<m,0\leq j<n}\) for elements in \({\mathcal Q}_ T\), there exist vectors \(\{x_ i\}_{0\leq i<m}\) and \(\{y_ j\}_{0\leq j<n}\) in H such that \([L_{ij}]=[x_ i\otimes y_ j]\), \(0\leq i<m\), \(0\leq j<n.\) The paper starts by proving an equation-solving result (for systems of \(1\times \aleph_ 0\) simultaneous equations) and a geometric criterion for membership in \(A_{1,\aleph_ 0}\), both being considerable improvements over corresponding results (for solving one single equation and for membership in \(A_{1,1}\), respectively) in [I]. These, combined with results for analytic invariant subspaces, eventually yield, among equivalences between various concepts and sufficient conditions for reflexivity, that a contraction T is in class \(A_{1,\aleph_ 0}\) if and only if it has an analytic invariant subspace, and that these imply the reflexivity of T. The result mentioned in our first paragraph then follows as a corollary. The proofs for all these involve a lot of delicate, technically difficult estimates. The end result represents a major achievement of the dual algebra approach to the invariant subspace problem, which originates from \textit{S. W. Brown}'s proof of the invariant subspace theorem for subnormal operators [Integral equations operator theory 1, 310-333 (1978; Zbl 0416.47009)] a decade ago. More recently, \textit{B. Chevreau} and \textit{S. Brown} [C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 307, 185-188 (1988; Zbl 0659.47009)] have shown that any contraction in A is reflexive, thus establishing one of the conjectures at the end of the paper (the other conjecture is that every hyponormal operator is reflexive).