Contractive and completely contractive homomorphisms of planar algebras (Q819234)

Let \(\Omega\) be a finitely connected domain in the complex plane. It is assumed that its boundary is the disjoint union of simple analytic closed curves. Let \(T\) be a bounded linear operator on a Hilbert space \(\mathcal H\) with spectrum in \(\Omega\). \(T\) induces a unital homomorphism \(\rho_T = r(T)\) on the algebra Rat\((\Omega)\) of rational functions with poles off \(\Omega\). Let \(A(\Omega)\) be the closure of this algebra with respect to the supremum norm. The authors examine the question whether contractive homomorphisms on \(A(\Omega)\) are necessarily completely contractive. It is shown that a homomorphism \(\rho : A(\Omega) \rightarrow \mathcal B(\mathcal H)\) for which dim \(A(\Omega)/\text{ker}\rho\) = 2 is the direct integral of homomorphisms induced by two-dimensional Hilbert spaces via a suitable functional calculus. A consequence of Arveson's dilation theorem for completely contractive homomorphisms is that such a homomorphism possesses a dilation. An explicit construction of such a dilation is given. It is shown how to construct an example of a contractive homomorphism of \(A(\Omega)\) that does not dilate. The paper concludes with an outline of a scheme for constructing the dilation of a homomorphism on \(A(\Omega)\) into matrix algebras induced by an operator with distinct eigenvalues.