Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

It is well-known that every Schur function on the bidisk can be written as a sum involving two positive semidefinite kernels. Such decompositions, called Agler decompositions, have been used to answer interpolation questions on the bidisk as well as to derive the transfer function realization of Schur functions used in systems theory. The original arguments for the existence of such Agler decompositions were nonconstructive and the structure of these decompositions has remained quite mysterious. In this talk, we will discuss an elementary proof of the existence of Agler decompositions on the bidisk, which is constructive for inner functions. We will use this proof as a springboard to examine the structure of such decompositions and properties of their associated reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces.