Restriction operators, balayage and doubly orthogonal systems of analytic functions

Systems of analytic functions which are simultaneously orthogonal over each of two domains were apparently first studied in particular cases by Walsh and Szegö, and in full generality by Bergman. In principle, these are very interesting objects, allowing application to analytic continuation that is not restricted (as Weierstrassian continuation via power series) either by circular geometry or considerations of locality. However, few explicit examples are known, and in general one does not know even gross qualitative features of such systems. The main contribution of the present paper is to prove qualitative results in a quite general situation. It is by now very well known that the phenomenon of “double orthogonality” is not restricted to Bergman spaces of analytic functions, nor even indeed has it any intrinsic relation to analyticity; its essence is an eigenvalue problem arising whenever one considers the operator of restriction on a Hilbert space of functions on some set, to a subset thereof, provided this restriction is injective and compact. However, in this paper only Hilbert spaces of analytic functions are considered, especially Bergman spaces. In the case of the Hardy spaces Fisher and Micchelli discovered remarkable qualitative features of doubly orthogonal systems, and we have shown how, based on the classical potential-theoretic notion of balayage, and its modern generalizations, one can deduce analogous results in the Bergman space set-up, but with restrictions imposed on the geometry of the considered domains and measures; these were not needed in the Fisher–Micchelli analysis, but are necessary here as shown by examples. From a more constructive point of view we study the Bergman restriction operator between the unit disk and a compactly contained quadrature domain and show that the representing kernel of this operator is rational and it is expressible (as an inversion followed by a logarithmic derivative) in terms of the polynomial equation of the boundary of the inner domain.