Numerical ranges of $C_0(N)$ contractions

Abstract

A conjecture of Halmos proved by Choi and Li states that the closure of the numerical range of a contraction on a Hilbert space is the intersection of the closure of the numerical ranges of all its unitary dilations. We show that for $C_0(N)$ contractions one can restrict the intersection to a smaller family of dilations. This generalizes a finite dimensional result of Gau and Wu.

v1: 13 pages; v2: 14 pages; typos removed, title changed, slight change to the proof of Theorem 4.6. The final publication will be available in IEOT at http://www.springerlink.com