Geometric similarity invariants of Cowen-Douglas operators (Q6111633)

Summary: \textit{M. J. Cowen} and \textit{R.G. Douglas} [Acta Math. 141, 187--261 (1978; Zbl 0427.47016)] introduced a class of operators \(B_n (\Omega)\) (known as Cowen-Douglas class of operators) and associated a Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle to such an operator. They gave a complete set of unitary invariants in terms of the curvature and its covariant derivatives. At the same time they asked whether one can use geometric ideas to find a complete set of similarity invariants of Cowen-Douglas operators. We give a partial answer to this question. In this paper, we show that the curvature and the second fundamental form completely determine the similarity orbit of a norm dense class of Cowen-Douglas operators. As an application we show that uncountably many (non-similar) strongly irreducible operators in \(B_n (\mathbb{D})\) can be constructed from a given operator in \(B_1 (\mathbb{D})\). We also characterize a class of strongly irreducible weakly homogeneous operators in \(B_n (\mathbb{D})\).