Cyclic row contractions and rigidity of invariant subspaces

Abstract: It is known that pure row contractions with one-dimensional defect spaces can be classified up to unitary equivalence by compressions of the standard $d$-shift acting on the full Fock space. Upon settling for a softer relation than unitary equivalence, we relax the defect condition and simply require the row contraction to admit a cyclic vector. We show that cyclic pure row contractions can be "transformed" (in a precise technical sense) into compressions of the standard $d$-shift. Cyclic decompositions of the underlying Hilbert spaces are the natural tool to extend this fact to higher multiplicities. We show that such decompositions face multivariate obstacles of an algebraic nature. Nevertheless, some decompositions are obtained for nilpotent commuting row contractions by analyzing function theoretic rigidity properties of their invariant subspaces.