Co-isometric weighted composition operators on Hilbert spaces of analytic functions

Abstract: We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for a weighted composition operator to be co-isometric on a general weighted Hardy space of analytic functions in the unit disk whose reproducing kernel has the usual natural form. This turns out to be equivalent to the property of being unitary. The result reveals a dichotomy identifying a specific family of weighted Hardy spaces as the only ones that support non-trivial operators of this kind.