Rigidity of composition operators on the Hardy space HP

Let phi be an analytic map taking the unit disk ID into itself. We establish that the class of composition operators f bar right arrow C-phi(f) = f o phi exhibits a rather strong rigidity of non-compact behaviour on the Hardy space H-P, for 1 <= p < infinity and p not equal 2. Our main result is the following trichotomy, which states that exactly one of the following alternatives holds: (i) C-phi is a compact operator H-P -> H-P, (ii) C-phi fixes a (linearly isomorphic) copy of l(P) in H-P, but C-phi does not fix any copies of l(2) in H-P, (iii) C-phi fixes a copy of l(2) in H-P. Moreover, in case (iii) the operator C-phi actually fixes a copy of L-P(0, 1) in H-P provided p > 1. We reinterpret these results in terms of norm-closed ideals of the bounded linear operators on H-P, which contain the compact operators k(H-P). In particular, the class of composition operators on H-P does not reflect the quite complicated lattice structure of such ideals. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.