Canonical decomposition of a tetrablock contraction and operator model

Abstract

A triple of commuting operators for which the closed tetrablock $\overline{\mathbb E}$ is a spectral set is called a tetrablock contraction or an $\mathbb E$-contraction. The set $\mathbb E$ is defined as \[ \mathbb E = \{ (x_1,x_2,x_3)\in\mathbb C^3\,:\, 1-zx_1-wx_2+zwx_3\neq 0 \textup{ whenever } |z|\leq 1, |w|\leq 1 \}. \] We show that every $\mathbb E$-contraction can be uniquely written as a direct sum of an $\mathbb E$-unitary and a completely non-unitary $\mathbb E$-contraction. It is analogous to the canonical decomposition of a contraction operator into a unitary and a completely non-unitary contraction. We produce a concrete operator model for such a triple satisfying some conditions.