Multiplicative operators on analytic function spaces

Abstract

H. J. Schwartz proved in his thesis (1969) that a nonzero bounded operator on Hardy spaces $(H^p, 1\leq p\leq\infty)$ is almost multiplicative if and only if it is a composition operator. But, his proof has a gap. In this article, we show that his result is not correct for $H^\infty$ and we fill the gap for $H^p, 1\leq p<\infty.$ Further, we prove that on several classical spaces such as the Bloch space, the little Bloch space, Besov spaces $B_p$ for $p>1$, and weighted Bergman spaces an operator is almost multiplicative if and only if it is a composition operator. Finally, we give a complete characterization of those composition operators that are multiplicative with respect to the Duhamel product of analytic functions.