Hausdorff measures, capacities and compact composition operators (Q2491113)

An analytic self map \(\phi\) of the unit disk \(\Delta\) induces a composition operator \(C_\phi:f\mapsto f\circ \phi\). A classical result (due to H. J. Schwartz) asserts that if \(C_\phi\) is compact on the Hardy space \(H^p\), \(1\leq p<\infty\), then the set \(E_\phi=\{e^{i\theta}\in \partial \Delta: | \phi(e^{i\theta}| =1\}\) has zero Lebesgue measure. In the present article the authors show that this result is sharp in the following sense: there exists a \(\phi\) such that the Hausdorff dimension of \(E_\phi\) is one and \(C_\phi\) is compact. As a consequence there exists a \(\phi\) inducing a compact composition operator on the weighted Dirichlet space \({\mathcal D}_\alpha\), \(0<\alpha<1\), such that the \(\alpha\)-capacity of \(E_\phi\) is positive. The function \(\phi\) is the Riemann map of a simply connected domain in \(\Delta\). The construction of this domain involves generalized Cantor sets. The proof that \(C_\phi\) is compact uses the angular derivative criterion and involves estimates for harmonic measures.