Inner and characteristic functions in polydiscs

Abstract

Characteristic functions of linear operators are analytic functions that serve as complete unitary invariants. Such functions, as long as they are built in a natural and canonical manner, provide representations of inner functions on a suitable domain and make significant contributions to the development of various theories in Hilbert function spaces. In this paper, we solve this problem in polydiscs. In particular, we present a concrete description of the characteristic functions of tuples of commuting pure contractions and, consequently, provide a description of inner functions on polydiscs.