Contractions with rank one defect operators and truncated CMV matrices

The main issue we address in the present paper are the new models for completely nonunitary contractions with rank one defect operators acting on some Hilbert space of dimension N⩽∞. These models complement nicely the well-known models of Livšic and Sz.-Nagy–Foias. We show that each such operator acting on some finite-dimensional (respectively, separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space) is unitarily equivalent to some finite (respectively semi-infinite) truncated CMV matrix obtained from the “full” CMV matrix by deleting the first row and the first column, and acting in CN (respectively ℓ2(N)). This result can be viewed as a nonunitary version of the famous characterization of unitary operators with a simple spectrum due to Cantero, Moral and Velázquez, as well as an analog for contraction operators of the result from [Yu. Arlinskiĭ, E. Tsekanovskiĭ, Non-self-adjoint Jacobi matrices with a rank-one imaginary part, J. Funct. Anal. 241 (2006) 383–438] concerning dissipative non-self-adjoint operators with a rank one imaginary part. It is shown that another functional model for contractions with rank one defect operators takes the form of the compression f(ζ)→PK(ζf(ζ)) on the Hilbert space L2(T,dμ) with a probability measure μ onto the subspace K=L2(T,dμ)⊖C. The relationship between characteristic functions of sub-matrices of the truncated CMV matrix with rank one defect operators and the corresponding Schur iterates is established. We develop direct and inverse spectral analysis for finite and semi-infinite truncated CMV matrices. In particular, we study the problem of reconstruction of such matrices from their spectrum or the mixed spectral data involving Schur parameters. It is pointed out that if the mixed spectral data contains zero eigenvalue, then no solution, unique solution or infinitely many solutions may occur in the inverse problem for truncated CMV matrices. The uniqueness theorem for recovered truncated CMV matrix from the given mixed spectral data is established. In this part the paper is closely related to the results of Hochstadt and Gesztesy–Simon obtained for finite self-adjoint Jacobi matrices.