PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 134, Number 9, September 2006, Pages 2599–2605 S 0002-9939(06)08271-2 Article electronically published on February 17, 2006 COMPOSITION OPERATORS WITH MAXIMAL NORM ON WEIGHTED BERGMAN SPACES BRENT J. CARSWELL AND CHRISTOPHER HAMMOND (Communicated by Joseph A. Ball) Abstract. We prove that any composition operator with maximal norm on 2 2 2 one of the weighted Bergman spaces Aα (in particular, on the space A = A0) is induced by a disk automorphism or a map that fixes the origin. This result demonstrates a major difference between the weighted Bergman spaces and the Hardy space H2, where every inner function induces a composition operator with maximal norm. 1. Introduction Let D denote the open unit disk in the complex plane, with dA signifying nor- malized area measure on D. Recall that the Hardy space H2 is the set of all analytic functions f on D such that 2π 2 1 iθ 2 ∞ f H2 := sup f re dθ < . 0<r<1 2π 0 − 2 D For α> 1, the weighted Bergman space Aα consists of all analytic f on for which 2 | |2 −| |2 α f α := f(z) (α + 1)(1 z ) dA(z) D 1 2π α +1 2 = r(1 − r2)α f reiθ dθ dr π 0 0 2 2 is finite. The space A0, usually denoted A , is called the (unweighted) Bergman 2 2 space. The Hardy space H and the weighted Bergman spaces Aα are all Hilbert spaces, each under the obvious inner product. The properties of these spaces are discussed further in [5], [6], and [9]. Let ϕ be an analytic self-map of D.IfH is a Hilbert space of analytic functions on D, we define the composition operator Cϕ on H by the rule Cϕ(f)=f ◦ ϕ.Itis well known that any ϕ induces a bounded composition operator on H2,with 1 2 1+|ϕ(0)| (1) ≤ C : H2 → H2 ≤ . 1 −|ϕ(0)|2 ϕ 1 −|ϕ(0)| Received by the editors February 2, 2005 and, in revised form, March 21, 2005. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 47B33. Key words and phrases. Composition operator, norm, essential norm. c 2006 American Mathematical Society Reverts to public domain 28 years from publication 2599 License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use 2600 BRENT CARSWELL AND CHRISTOPHER HAMMOND (See [4, Corollary 3.7].) Likewise, every composition operator is bounded on each 2 of the weighted Bergman spaces Aα,with α+2 α+2 1 2 1+|ϕ(0)| (2) ≤ C : A2 → A2 ≤ . 1 −|ϕ(0)|2 ϕ α α 1 −|ϕ(0)| (The proof of (2) is similar to that of (1); see, for example, [16, Lemma 2.3].) When ϕ(0) = 0, it is easy to see that the norm of the corresponding composition operator, acting on either the Hardy space or one of weighted Bergman spaces, is equal to 1. When ϕ(0) = 0, on the other hand, it is quite difficult to determine the norm of Cϕ exactly. (See [1], [2], [7], [8], [10], and [13] for explicit norm calculations; related results appear in [3], [15], [16], [17], [19], [22], and [23].) One problem that has attracted significant attention is the question of which composition operators have maximal norm on a particular Hilbert space. In other words, for the Hardy space H2, one would like to identify the maps ϕ : D → D for which 2 1+|ϕ(0)| (3) C : H2 → H2 = . ϕ 1 −|ϕ(0)| 2 Similarly, for a weighted Bergman space Aα, one would like to determine when α+2 2 1+|ϕ(0)| (4) C : A2 → A2 = . ϕ α α 1 −|ϕ(0)| This question has already been answered in the context of the Hardy space. In one of the earliest papers on composition operators, Nordgren [13] showed that 2 → 2 Cϕ : H H has maximal norm whenever ϕ is an inner function;thatis,when- iθ ever limr↑1 ϕ re = 1 for almost all θ in [0, 2π). More recently, Joel Shapiro [19] demonstrated that, when ϕ(0) = 0, these are the only composition operators with maximal norm on H2. (See [12] for an alternate approach to this result.) Until now, this problem has remained open in the setting of the weighted Bergman spaces, even 2 2 for the space A = A0. It is already known that any disk automorphism induces 2 a composition operator with maximal norm on Aα (see, for example, the proof of [16, Lemma 2.3]). The purpose of this paper is to prove that, when ϕ(0) =0,there 2 are no other composition operators that have maximal norm on Aα. This result is the substance of Theorem 3.3. We remark that the complementary question—which composition operators have minimal norm—can be answered without much difficulty. In fact, when ϕ(0) =0, the only composition operators with minimal norm, either on the Hardy space or one of the weighted Bergman spaces, are those with constant symbol (see [7, Lemma 4.1], [8, Lemma 2.1], [15, Theorem 4], and [22, Theorem 3]). 2. Essential norms H Let be a Hilbert space. Recall that the essential norm T e of an operator T : H→His defined as follows: T =infT − K, e K the infimum being taken over the set of all compact operators K : H→H.Inother words, the essential norm represents the distance between T and the set of compact operators. It is often helpful to consider the relationship between the norm of an operator and its essential norm. Since the trivial operator is compact, we see that License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use COMPOSITION OPERATORS WITH MAXIMAL NORM 2601 ≤ H→H T e T for any T : .Furthermore,if T e < T , we know that the operator T is norm-attaining (see [7, Proposition 2.2]); that is, there is some unit vector h in H such that T (h) = T . We will make use of this fact in the proof of Proposition 3.1. 2 2 Now consider a composition operator Cϕ, acting on either H or Aα.Itmakes sense to say that Cϕ has maximal essential norm whenever line (3) or line (4), as appropriate, holds with the norm of Cϕ replaced by the essential norm. As it turns out, our investigation of composition operators with maximal norm will also allow us to characterize the composition operators that have maximal essential norm on 2 Aα. We note that this condition is not equivalent to saying that Cϕ e = Cϕ , a property often called extremal noncompactness.Whenϕ(z)=(1/2) z +1/2, for 2 → 2 example, one can show that Cϕ : Aα Aα is extremally noncompact, but that it does not have maximal essential norm. As it happens, more information is known about the essential norm of a compo- sition operator than about the norm itself. In particular, we have explicit formulas for the essential norm of Cϕ acting on a variety of spaces. The prototypical re- sult, a formula for the essential norm of a composition operator on the Hardy space, was established by Joel Shapiro [18]. His technique was later adapted to the weighted Bergman spaces by Poggi-Corradini [14], who obtained a formula for 2 → 2 Cϕ : Aα Aα e when α =0orα = 1. Poggi-Corradini’s proof relies on the 2 2 use of contractive zero-divisors for the spaces A and A1. Results due to Shimorin [20, 21], pertaining to contractive divisors, show that Poggi-Corradini’s formula is actually valid whenever −1 <α≤ 1. In the course of proving his essential norm formula, Poggi-Corradini demon- strated the following result, which holds for all α>−1: ∈ −1 W (|zj|) 2 → 2 2 ≤ zj ϕ (a) Cϕ : Aα Aα e lim sup , |a|→1 W (|a|) where (1 − r2)α+2 W (r)= . α +2 This fact is a major ingredient in the proof of [14, Claim 3.1]. Cowen and MacCluer, as part of the proof of [4, Corollary 3.21], showed that | | α+1 ∈ −1 H( zj ) 1+|ϕ(0)| 1 lim sup zj ϕ (a) ≤ , |a|→1 H(|a|) 1 −|ϕ(0)| β(ϕ) 2 α+2 where H(r)=| log(r )| and β(ϕ) = lim inf|z|→1(1 −|ϕ(z)|)/(1 −|z|). It is not difficult to see that | | | | z ∈ϕ−1(a) W ( zj ) z ∈ϕ−1(a) H( zj ) lim sup j = lim sup j . |a|→1 W (|a|) |a|→1 H(|a|) Consequently α+1 2 1+|ϕ(0)| 1 C : A2 → A2 ≤ ϕ α α e 1 −|ϕ(0)| β(ϕ) for any analytic ϕ : D → D. Suppose then that ϕ(0) = 0; in this case, Lemma 7.33 in [4] dictates that β(ϕ) > 1 whenever ϕ is not a rotation. In other words, we have established the following proposition. License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use 2602 BRENT CARSWELL AND CHRISTOPHER HAMMOND Proposition 2.1. Let ϕ be an analytic self-map of D with ϕ(0) = 0.Ifϕ is not a 2 → 2 rotation, then Cϕ : Aα Aα e < 1. This observation will allow us to obtain the major results of Section 3. We conclude this section by mentioning a class of subspaces that have proved particularly useful to the study of essential norms. For any natural number m,let m 2 2 z Aα denote the subspace consisting of all functions in Aα with a zero of order at 2 1 2 least m at the origin (with zAα = z Aα).