Operator analogues of Mahler's measure (Q405401)

The Mahler measure \(M(p)\) of a complex polynomial \(p(z)\) can be expressed by the formula \(M(p)=\exp \left(\frac{1}{2\pi } \int _{-\pi }^{\pi }\ln |p(e^{\, i{\kern 1pt} t} )|dt \right)\) and also has the representation \(M(p)=\operatorname{dist}(p,[zp])\), where \([zp]\) is the closed invariant subspace of the Hardy shift generated by \(z{\kern 1pt} p(z)\). Motivated by this second formula, the authors define two operator-based analogs of Mahler's measure and study their properties.