Adjoints of linear fractional composition operators on \(S^2(\mathbb D)\) (Q442496)

Let \(H(\mathbb{D})\) be the space of analytic functions on the unit disk \(\mathbb{D}\). If \(\varphi\) is an analytic self-map of \(\mathbb{D}\), then the composition operator \(C_\varphi:H(\mathbb{D})\to H(\mathbb{D})\) is defined by \(C_\varphi(f)=f\circ\varphi\). In this paper, the author considers composition operators \(C_\varphi:S^2(\mathbb{D})\to S^2(\mathbb{D})\) with linear fractional symbols \(\varphi(z)=\dfrac{az+b}{cz+d}\), \(ad-bc\neq 0\), where \(S^2(\mathbb{D})\) denotes the Hardy-Sobolev space \[ S^2(\mathbb{D}):=\{f\in H^2(\mathbb{D}): f'\in H^2(\mathbb{D})\}, \] endowed with the inner product \[ \langle f,g\rangle_{S^2}=\left\langle \sum_{n=0}^\infty a_n z^n, \sum_{n=0}^\infty b_n z^n\right\rangle_{S^2} :=a_0\overline{b_0}+\sum_{n=1}^\infty a_n\overline {b_n} n^2. \] The main result states that the adjoint operator \(C^*_\varphi:S^2(\mathbb{D})\to S^2(\mathbb{D})\) is given by \[ C^*_\varphi=M_h^* \circ C_{\psi}\circ M_{1/h}\circ M^*_g\circ C_{f} + K, \] where \(f,\,g\) and \(h\) are analytic polynomials of degree 1, \(M_g\), \(M_{1/g}\) and \(M_h\) denote the pointwise multiplication operators by \(g\), \(1/g\) and \(h\), respectively, \(M_g^*\) and \(M_h^* \) are the adjoints of \(M_g\) and \(M_h\), respectively (that is, Toeplitz type operators with symbols \(\overline g\) and \(\overline h\)), \(\psi\) is the involutive Möbius transformation of \(\mathbb{D}\) which interchanges \(0\) and \(\varphi(0)\), and \(K\) is a compact operator. The paper also contains several references about analogous problems for composition operators defined on the Hardy space \(H^2\), the Bergman space \(B^2\) and the Dirichlet space \(\mathcal{D}\).