Ranks of backward shift invariant subspaces of the Hardy space over the bidisk

Abstract

Let $\{\varphi _n(z)\}_{n\ge 0}$ be a sequence of inner functions satisfying that $\zeta _n(z):=\varphi _n(z)/\varphi _{n+1}(z)\in H^\infty (z)$ for every $n\ge 0$ and $\{\varphi _n(z)\}_{n\ge 0}$ has no nonconstant common inner divisors. Associated with it, we have a Rudin type invariant subspace $\mathcal{M }$ of $H^2(\mathbb{D }^2)$. The ranks of $\mathcal{M }\ominus w\mathcal{M }$ for $\mathcal{F }_z$ and $\mathcal{F }^*_z$ respectively are determined, where $\mathcal{F }_z$ is the fringe operator on $\mathcal{M }\ominus w\mathcal{M }$. Let $\mathcal{N }= H^2(\mathbb{D }^2)\ominus \mathcal{M }$. It is also proved that the rank of $\mathcal{M }\ominus w\mathcal{M }$ for $\mathcal{F }^*_z$ equals to the rank of $\mathcal{N }$ for $T^*_z$ and $T^*_w$.