On causality in commutant lifting theorem. I (Q1804043)

Let \(S\) be an isometry on a Hilbert space \(L\), \(T\) a contraction on \(H\) and \(A\) an operator from \(L\) to \(H\) such that \(AS=TA\). Two functionals \(\mu(A)\) and \(\bar\mu(A)\) were introduced by Foiaş and Tannenbaum to study the causality in the commutant lifting theory, the necessity of which comes from their attempt to generalize the classical commutant lifting theory to nonlinear operators in connection with the nonlinear system control problem. The causal commutant lifting theorem proved by them states that \(\bar\mu(A)\) equals the minimum norm of a causal intertwining dilation of \(A\). Here an intertwining dilation of \(A\) is an operator \(B: L\to K\) such that \(BS=UB\) and \(PB=A\), where \(U\) on \(K\supseteq H\) is a minimal isometric dilation of \(T\) and \(P\) is the orthogonal projection from \(K\) onto \(H\), and causality is defined in terms of a nested sequence of projections on \(L\). It was also known that \(\mu(A)\leq\bar\mu(A)\) is always true, \(\mu(A)\neq\bar\mu(A)\) in general and \(\mu(A)=\bar\mu(A)\) if \(\ker T=\{0\}\). In this paper, the author proves that if \(\ker T\neq\{0\}\) but \(\ker T=\ker T^ 2\), then \(\bar\mu(A)\leq\sqrt{2} \mu(A)\) and shows that in this case \(\sqrt{2}\) is the smallest possible constant.