Operators with commutative commutants (Q1110794)

Given operators M and N on a Hilbert space H, suppose that M (resp. N) is the direct sum of k (resp. n) copies of an operator A having a commutative commutant. Suppose further that m and k are countable cardinalities (or, any cardinalities if H is separable) and that N is a quasi-affine transform of M (i.e., \(NX=XM\) for some injective operator X with dense range). The authors show that then \(k=m\). In the case in which the isometry N is a quasi-affine transform of the isometry M, and the unitary part of the Wold decomposition of N has a singular scalar-valued spectral measure, it is shown that M and N are unitarily equivalent. The authors conclude with a result on the hyper-invariant subspaces of operators commuting with \((M_ z)^ n\), \(n<\infty\), whre \(M_ z\) is multiplication by z in some \(R^ 2(F,\mu)\) (where F is a compact subset of \({\mathbb{C}}\), \(\mu\) is a positive Borel measure supported on F, and \(R^ 2(F,\mu)\) is the closure in \({\mathcal L}^ 2(\mu)\) of the algebra Rat(F) of all rational functions with poles off F).