Essential norm estimates for composition operators on BMOA (Q2436749)

The paper under review concerns compactness of arbitrary composition operators \(C_{\varphi}\) acting on the spaces \(\text{BMOA}\) and \(\text{VMOA}\) in terms of estimating the essential norm of \(C_{\varphi}\) on \(\text{BMOA}\) and on \(\text{VMOA}\), respectively, where \(\varphi\) is an analytic self-map on the open unit disc \(\mathbb D\). It was shown in [\textit{H. Wulan} et al., Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 137, No. 11, 3861--3868 (2009; Zbl 1194.47038)] that \(C_{\varphi}\) is compact on \(\text{BMOA}\) if and only if \(\lim_{n\to \infty}\|\varphi^n\|= 0\), which is equivalent to the condition that \(\limsup_{|\varphi(a)| \to 1}\|\varphi_a\|_2= 0\) given in [\textit{J. Laitila} et al., Complex Anal. Oper. Theory 7, No. 1, 163--181 (2013; Zbl 1295.47019)], where \(\varphi_a= \sigma_{\varphi(a)}\circ \varphi \circ \sigma_a\) for \(a\in {\mathbb D}\) and \(\sigma_a\) is the conformal automorphism of \(\mathbb D\) which sends the point \(0\) to \(a\). In the present paper, the authors show that the essential norm of \(C_{\varphi}\) on \(\text{BMOA}\) is comparable with \(\limsup_{n\to \infty}\|\varphi^n\|\). In the case where \(\varphi\) belongs to \(\text{VMOA}\) (or \(\varphi\) is univalent, resp.), the essential norm of \(C_{\varphi}\) is comparable to its essential norm on \(\text{VMOA}\) and can be estimated by \(\limsup_{|\varphi(a)|\to 1} \|\varphi_a\|_2\) (or is comparable with its essential norm on the Bloch space, resp., and can be estimated by \(\limsup_{n\to \infty}\|\varphi^n\|_B\)).