Group of isometries of Hilbert ball equipped with the Carathéodory metric (Q2147629)

This paper is concerned with the study of properties of certain isometries of infinite dimensional hyperbolic spaces. A bounded domain in a (possibly infinite dimensional) complex Banach space can be given a pseudo-metric known as the \textit{Carathéodory metric}. The Carathéodory metric on the unit disk of the complex plane coincides with the Poincaré metric, and it is hence a model for the hyperbolic plane. If \(B\) denotes the unit ball of an infinite dimensional Hilbert space \(H\), it is then legitimate to think of \(B\) with Carathéodory metric as an infinite dimensional hyperbolic space. \textit{T. Franzoni} and \textit{E. Vesentini} studied the group \(G\) of bi-holomorphic isometries \(\Aut(B)\) in [Holomorphic maps and invariant distances. Amsterdam - New York - Oxford: North-Holland Publishing Company (1980; Zbl 0447.46040)]. They showed that any isometry in \(G\) can be described in terms of linear isomorphisms of \(H\otimes \mathbb{C}\) that preserves a sesquilinear form. It is also known [\textit{T. L. Hayden} and \textit{T. J. Suffridge}, Pac. J. Math. 38, 419--422 (1971; Zbl 0229.47043)] that the elements of \(G\) can also be categorised as elliptic, hyperbolic or parabolic in terms of fixed points of their extension to the closed ball \(\overline{B}\). This is the starting point of the paper under consideration. The main focus of the authors is to understand more explicitly properties of the linear operator \(S\in\mathcal{L}(H\otimes \mathbb{C})\) associated with an isometry in \(G\) and try to give them a geometric meaning. More in detail: \begin{itemize} \item they study when \(S\) is a normal or unitary operator. They show that if \(S\) is normal then the isometry is hyperbolic (Theorem 3). \item they study when \(S\) is self-adjoint (Proposition 5) or involutory (Proposition 6). \end{itemize} They also verify that if \(H=\ell_2(\mathbb{N})\) is the infinite dimensional separable Hilbert space, then both \(G\) and and the set of self-adjoint elements of \(G\) have the cardinality of the continuum.