Operator Valued Functions with Pick Operators Having Negative Subspaces of Bounded Dimensions

Functions whose values are bounded linear Hilbert space operators (each operator may be defined on its own subspace of the ambient Hilbert space), the domain of definition is contained in the open unit disc, and having the following property κ, are studied. (κ): All Pick operators associated with the function have the dimensions of their spectral subspace corresponding to the negative part of the spectrum bounded above by a fixed nonnegative integer κ, and the bound κ is attained. No a priori hypotheses concerning regularity of the functions are assumed. A particular class of functions, called standard functions, is introduced, and the corresponding nonnegative integer κ is identified for standard functions. It is proved that every function with property (κ) can be extended to a standard function with property (κ), for the same κ. This result is interpreted as a result on interpolation. As an application, maximal (with respect to the extension relation) functions with the property κ, for a fixed κ, are studied in terms of standard functions.