Finite Blaschke products of contractions (Q1399259)

Let \(A\) be a contraction operator in the Hilbert space \(H\). The famous von Neumann inequality claims that \(\|\varphi(A)\|\leq \|\varphi\|_\infty\) for any function \(\varphi\) analytic in the disk \(|z|<R\) with \(R>1\). The case when \(\varphi\) is a finite Blaschke product of the order \(n\) is under investigation in the present paper. The authors prove that \(\|\varphi(A)\|=1\) if and only if \(\|A^n\|=1\). Since a sequence \(\{\|A^j\|\}\) is nonincreasing, the value named a norm-one index of \(A\) by \[ k_A=\sup\{k: \|A^k\|=1\} \] comes in quite naturally. The authors give some two-sided bounds for this value in the case when \(H\) is finite-dimensional.