Analytic theory of hyponormal operators with rank one self-commutators (Q1949282)

A bounded linear operator \(H\) on a Hilbert space \(\mathcal H\) is said to be \textit{hyponormal} if the self-commutator \([H^*, H]:=H^*H-HH^*\) of \(H\) is a positive operator. A hyponormal operator is \textit{pure} if it has no normal direct summand. The paper under review is a continuation of the author's work [5--6] (with J. D. Pincus) and [9--13] on pure hyponormal operators with finite rank self-commutators. In particular, the author studies the so-called analytic and dual models of pure hyponormal operators with rank one self-commutators. To state one notable achievement of this paper, we need a few definitions and notations. Let \(H\) be a pure hyponormal operator on \(\mathcal H\) such that the defect space \(D:=[H^*, H](\mathcal H)\) is a one-dimensional space spanned by \(y \in D\). Then, for all \(z , w\) in the complement of the spectrum \(\sigma(H)\) of \(H\), one has \[ \langle (z-H)^{-1}y, (w-H)^{-1}y\rangle= \exp \left \{\frac{1}{\pi}\int \int_{\sigma(H)}\frac{g(\zeta)\,dm(\zeta)}{(\zeta -z)(\bar{\zeta}-\bar{w})} \right \}-1, \] where \(m\) is the Lebesgue planar measure and \(g\) denotes the Pincus principal function of \(H\). Assume further that \(H\) is cyclic. If the Pincus principal function \(g\) of \(H\) is rotation-invariant, then one of the following happens: 1. \(H\) is a scalar multiple of the unilateral shift of multiplicity \(1\). 2. There exists \(0 < b < a < \infty\) such that \(\sigma(H)\) is the annulus of inner-radius \(b\) and outer-radius \(a\) such that \(\mathcal H\) admits the orthonormal basis \[ \{a^{-m}H^m \frac{y}{\sqrt{a^2-b^2}} : m=0, 1, \dots\} \cup \{H^{-m}b^m \frac{y}{\sqrt{a^2-b^2}} : m=1, 2, \dots\}. \] In both cases, the Pincus principal function is the characteristic function of the spectrum of \(H\). This interesting paper may be considered as an important step towards the classification problem of hyponormal operators with finite rank self-commutators.