Orthogonal decomposition of composition operators on the $H^2$ space of Dirichlet series

Abstract: Let $\mathscr{H}^2$ denote the Hilbert space of Dirichlet series with square-summable coefficients. We study composition operators $\mathscr{C}\varphi$ on $\mathscr{H}^2$ which are generated by symbols of the form $\varphi(s) = c_0s + \sum{n\geq1} c_n n^{-s}$, in the case that $c_0 \geq 1$. If only a subset $\mathbb{P}$ of prime numbers features in the Dirichlet series of $\varphi$, then the operator $\mathscr{C}\varphi$ admits an associated orthogonal decomposition. Under sparseness assumptions on $\mathbb{P}$ we use this to asymptotically estimate the approximation numbers of $\mathscr{C}\varphi$. Furthermore, in the case that $\varphi$ is supported on a single prime number, we affirmatively settle the problem of describing the compactness of $\mathscr{C}_\varphi$ in terms of the ordinary Nevanlinna counting function. We give detailed applications of our results to affine symbols and to angle maps.