Composition Operators on de Branges–Rovnyak Spaces

Abstract

We study the compactness of the composition operator on de Branges–Rovnyak spaces. Inspired by a paper by Lyubarskii–Malinnikova on model spaces, we give some necessary and some sufficient conditions for compactness. In the paper of Lyubarskii-Malinnikova, the key point is some Bernstein inequality on model spaces due to Cohn (and based on a deep inequality of Axler–Chang–Sarason involving the Hardy–Littlewood maximal function). We generalize the result of Cohn to some subspace of a de Branges–Rovnyak space (in many cases dense) and then get a sufficient condition (analogue to Lyubarskii–Malinnikova’s condition) for compactness of the composition operator on that subspace.