Measures induced by analytic functions and a problem of Walter Rudin

Abstract:

The measure $\mu _\varphi$ induced by a bounded analytic function $\varphi$ on the unit disk $U$ may be defined by $\mu _\varphi (E)=m(\varphi ^{-1}(E))$, where $m$ is normalized Lebesgue measure on $\partial U$. We discuss the problem of characterizing such measures, and produce some necessary conditions which we conjecture are sufficient. Our main results are a construction showing that our conjectured sufficient conditions are sufficient for a measure to be weakly approximable by induced measures, and a construction of a function $\varphi$, not a constant multiple of an inner function, whose induced measure is rotationally symmetric. This function is not inner, but satisfies $\int \varphi \left (e^{i\theta }\right )^m\overline {\varphi \left (e^{i\theta }\right )^n} \frac {d\theta }{2\pi }=0$ if $m\ne n$, thus answering a question posed by Walter Rudin.