Roots of Toeplitz operators on the Bergman space (Q650128)

The authors study the question of describing the commutant of a given Toeplitz operator (acting on the Bergman space over the unit disk \(D\) in the complex plane \(\mathbb C\)), i.e., of describing the set of all Toeplitz operators that commute with the given one. In [\textit{I. Louhichi}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 135, No.~5, 1465--1475 (2007; Zbl 1112.47023)], the first author characterized the commutant of a Toeplitz operator \(T\) that has a quasihomogeneous symbol \(\varphi (r)e^{ip\theta}\) with \(p > 0\), in the case when it has a Toeplitz \(p\)-th root \(S\) with symbol \(\psi (r)e^{i\theta}\). In this case, the commutant of \(T\) is the closure of the linear space generated by those powers \(S^n\) that are Toeplitz. At the same time, the existence of a \(p\)-th root was known until now only when \(\varphi (r) = r^m\) with \(m \geq 0\). In the paper under review, the authors show the existence of \(p\)-th roots for a larger class of symbols, which includes, for example, those symbols for which \(\varphi (r) = \sum_{i=1}^kr^{a_i}(\ln r)^{b_i}\), where \(0 \leq a_i,b_i\) for all \(1 \leq i \leq k\).