Semicrossed products of the disk algebra: Contractive representations and maximal ideals (Q1127901)

Given the disk algebra \({\mathcal A}(\mathbb{D})\) and an automorphism \(\alpha\), there is associated a non-selfadjoint operator algebra \(\mathbb{Z}^+\times_\alpha{\mathcal A}(\mathbb{D})\) called the semicrossed product of \({\mathcal A}(\mathbb{D})\) with \(\alpha\). We consider those algebras where the automorphism arises via composition with parabolic, hyperbolic, and elliptic conformal maps \(\varphi\) of \(\mathbb{D}\) onto itself. To characterize the contractive representations of \(\mathbb{Z}^+\times_\alpha{\mathcal A}(\mathbb{D})\) a noncommutative dilation result is obtained. The result states that given a pair of contractions \(S,T\) on some Hilbert space \(\mathcal H\) which satisfies \(TS= S\varphi(T)\), there exist unitaries \(U, V\) on some Hilbert space \(K\subset{\mathcal H}\) which dilate \(S\) and \(T\) respectively and satisfy \(VU=U\varphi(V)\). It is then shown that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the contractive (and completely contractive) representations of \(\mathbb{Z}^+\times_\alpha{\mathcal A}(\mathbb{D})\) on a Hilbert space \({\mathcal H}\) and pairs of contractions \(S\) and \(T\) on \({\mathcal H}\) satisfying \(TS= S\varphi(T)\). The characters, maximal ideals, and strong radical of \(\mathbb{Z}^+\times_\alpha {\mathcal A}(\mathbb{D})\) are then computed. In the last section, we compare the strong radical to the Jacobson radical.