Unbounded Hankel operators and the flow of the cubic Szegő equation (Q6040621)

Let \(H^p\) be the standard Hardy spaces on the unit circle \(\mathbb{T}\). If the analytic \(u\in H^2\) is of bounded mean oscillation (BMOA), then the Hankel operator \(\Gamma_u\) with symbol \(u\) is bounded on \(H^2\). If \(u\) is not BMOA, then there are two ways to define a closed unbounded \(\Gamma_u\): (1) define \(\Gamma_u\) on the set of polynomials and take its closure (giving a minimal domain) or (2) define \(\Gamma_u\) on the maximal domain \(\operatorname{Dom}\Gamma_u=\{f\in H^2: \Gamma_u f\in H^2\}\). The main result of the paper is to show that these two definitions define the same domain for \(\Gamma_u\) and that its adjoint is given by \(\Gamma_u^*=\Gamma_{u^\#}\) with \(u^{\#}(z)=\overline{u(\overline{z})}\). The crucial part is to show that the polynomials are dense in \(\operatorname{Dom}\Gamma_u\) with respect to the graph norm \((\|f\|^2_{H^2}+\|\Gamma_u f\|^2_{H^2})^{1/2}\). It follows that if \(\|u_n- u\|\to 0\) in \(H^2\), then also \(\Gamma_{u_n}\Gamma_{u_n}^*\to \Gamma_{u}\Gamma_{u}^*\) and \(\Gamma_{u_n}^*\Gamma_{u_n}\to \Gamma_{u}^*\Gamma_{u}\) in a strong sense. The cubic Szegő equation in \(H^2\) is \(i \partial_t u =P(|u|^2 u)\) (with \(P\) the projection onto \(H^2\)). Let \(u(t,z)\) be a solution and \(\Phi(t)\), \(t>0\) the flow graph, i.e., \(\Phi(t)u(0,\cdot)=u(t,\cdot)\), then the second main result of the paper is that if \(\Phi(t)\) is defined for BMOA, then it can be extended to \(H^2\). Moreover, this result is sharp because it cannot be continuously extended to \(H^2\cap W^{-\delta,2}\) for \(\delta>0\) where \(W^{\alpha,p}\) denotes a Sobolev space. Its proof relies on a Lax pair formalism with the anti-linear variant \(H_u\) (\(H_u f:= \Gamma_u \overline{f}\)) as one of the operators of the Lax operator pair. Moreover \(\Phi(t)\) has several nice properties. Among others, it preserves the norm in \(H^2\).