Let a group of Möbius transformations of the unit disk have an orbit satisfying the Blaschke condition, counted once per distinct orbit point. For its Blaschke product , invariance of the pseudohyperbolic distance and permutation of the orbit give . The ratio extends across its zeros and has modulus one, so the open mapping theorem makes it a constant . Composition gives a group homomorphism . It is essential to compare moduli of the products: two arbitrary bounded holomorphic functions with identical zeros need not have constant quotient.
Blaschke condition 2026-10-14
The Blaschke condition for a sequence in the unit disc is . It characterizes the zero sequences, counted with multiplicity, of nonzero bounded holomorphic functions. Sufficiency follows by constructing the Blaschke product. For necessity, Jensen's formula gives when . Letting and using proves the condition. A finite zero at zero is factored out first. Equivalently, for the curvature-minus-one hyperbolic metric, , since .
Every nonzero bounded holomorphic function on the unit disc has this factorization, with the Blaschke product of its zeros and zero-free and holomorphic. The Blaschke condition follows from Jensen's formula. Dividing by any finite partial zero product gives a holomorphic function; the maximum modulus principle and the finite product's boundary modulus one bound that quotient by . Locally uniform convergence of the partial products gives the same bound for , with removable extensions at their zeros. This factorization alone does not make constant or a full inner-outer factorization.
Blaschke product 2026-10-14
For zeros in the unit disc satisfying , with occurrences at zero, a Blaschke product is
For and , the normalized factor satisfies . The product therefore converges locally uniformly; outside its prescribed zeros the logarithms of its tail factors converge absolutely, so it has no additional zeros. Every finite product has modulus at most one in the disc, and the limit does too. Since is pseudohyperbolic distance from to , its modulus can be estimated geometrically.
Use curvature-minus-one Hyperbolic distance in the Poincare disc. Each Blaschke factor has modulus , with . For , differentiating shows . Sum this logarithmic inequality over the zero factors and pass to the Blaschke product by locally uniform convergence. At a prescribed zero, its modulus vanishes and the bound is immediate. All sums count multiplicities.
A finite Blaschke product is holomorphic across the unit circle and has modulus one there. For a constant with , Rouché's theorem makes and have the same number of interior zeros, counting multiplicity. Each factor contributes its prescribed zero; the poles are outside the closed disk.
A simply connected plane domain carrying a hyperbolic metric is proper. By the Riemann mapping theorem, choose a biholomorphism sending a basepoint to zero. The same distance formula now gives
Thus the Blaschke condition holds. In particular the have no interior accumulation point: near any such point the quantities would stay bounded away from zero.
Construct the Blaschke product
Here precisely when the sequence contains zero. For , its normalized Blaschke factor satisfies
The Blaschke condition therefore makes the infinite product converge uniformly on every compact subdisk. Away from the prescribed zeros its tail factors tend uniformly to one with summable errors, so their logarithms converge and the product is nonzero. It has exactly the prescribed zeros, and the maximum modulus principle bounds every finite partial product by one, hence . Thus is the required bounded analytic function, with no extra zeros.
Simple connectivity cannot be dropped. On the punctured disk choose
The hyperbolic metric on the punctured disk is . Its universal covering map pulls it back to the curvature-minus-one upper-half-plane metric. The imaginary axis is a geodesic; the lift from to has length , and any other lift differs by a real deck translation and has at least that distance. Therefore
The triangle inequality again makes the sum finite for every basepoint. However, any bounded holomorphic function on the punctured disk extends over zero by the Riemann removable singularity theorem. These zeros accumulate at zero, so the identity theorem makes the extension identically zero. It cannot have exactly the prescribed zero set. This example of hyperbolic zero sequences on a punctured disk satisfies the distance condition but not the analytic zero-set condition.
Use the Nevanlinna proximity function and the Nevanlinna integrated counting function for poles, counting multiplicity. If the pole order at zero is , then
Boundedness of the Nevanlinna characteristic refers to , equivalently to a uniform bound on for any fixed . This avoids the harmless origin normalization when .
The Nevanlinna first main theorem states, for every fixed finite value and every nonconstant meromorphic function on the disk,
For , this is the definition of . The error is bounded independently of . Translation changes by , while Jensen's formula gives when near zero; these observations explain the first theorem.
The Nevanlinna second main theorem in the unit disc states that for distinct values on the Riemann sphere,
as outside an exceptional set satisfying . The truncated Nevanlinna counting function counts each distinct preimage once. The boundary-distance error cannot simply be suppressed: on the disk it need not be . The disk error and exceptional-set estimates follow from the logarithmic-derivative estimates in mathweb.tifr.res.in/Documents/Publications/Lectures/tifr17.pdf .
Suppose first that is bounded. Since , its poles satisfy the Blaschke condition, counting their orders: let in their integrated count and use . Let be their Blaschke product, including the origin factor if necessary. Then extends to a holomorphic function on the whole disk, and gives
Here the last bound follows from bounded and the uniform lower bound on .
The nonnegative subharmonic function has a finite harmonic majorant. Indeed its Poisson integrals on expanding disks dominate it by the maximum principle for subharmonic functions, increase with , and have . The Harnack inequality for harmonic functions bounds them on every compact subdisk, so their increasing limit is a finite harmonic function . Since the disk is simply connected, has a harmonic conjugate, giving a holomorphic function with . Consequently
This proves the constructive half of the quotient characterization of bounded characteristic.
Conversely, if with bounded holomorphic functions and , each pole of is a zero of of at least the same order. The elementary inequality and the Nevanlinna first main theorem give
Any cancellation at an origin zero contributes only a bounded multiple of on , which is included in this . The zero function is immediate; constant nonzero is handled directly. Thus bounded characteristic is exactly a quotient of two bounded analytic functions.
An unbounded example with bounded characteristic is
It is a ratio of the bounded holomorphic functions and . More explicitly, Jensen's formula gives the mean of as zero, so , although .
Finally, set . Pointwise . Jensen's inequality for the concave logarithm gives
There is no pole term because is holomorphic. Hence the stated integral bound implies bounded characteristic. This argument in fact works for every .
Let be the multiplicity at zero, and write with . The proof in solution gives . For radii without boundary zeros, Jensen's formula says
The absolute logarithmic hypothesis makes the left side tend to zero. The nonnegative zero sum increases to by the monotone convergence theorem, so this series is finite. Hence , and the Blaschke condition supplies a Blaschke product with exactly these zeros and their multiplicities.
The quotient extends holomorphically across every zero because the multiplicities agree, and the extensions have nonzero values. Thus with zero-free and holomorphic. We will also need the stronger Blaschke factorization of a bounded holomorphic function, namely . Let contain the factor and the first other zero factors. The quotient is holomorphic. On enclosing those finitely many zeros, its modulus is at most . The maximum modulus principle transfers this bound to the interior. Since the finite Blaschke product has boundary modulus one continuously, letting gives . Now let using locally uniform convergence of the Blaschke product, first off the zeros and then by continuity at them. This proves .
The zero-free quotient from solution has a holomorphic logarithm, so is harmonic. Its radial mean is the constant . Subtract the radial logarithmic means of and . The first tends to zero by the absolute logarithmic hypothesis; the second tends to zero by solution. It follows that
Since and , the maximum modulus principle makes a constant of modulus one. Absorb that constant into the unimodular factor of . Therefore itself is a Blaschke product. This proves the vanishing absolute logarithmic mean characterization of Blaschke products; conversely a Blaschke product satisfies the absolute version too, since .
Write a Blaschke product as , where , , and the zeros are counted with multiplicity. With normalized angular measure , Jensen's formula for each Blaschke factor gives
Indeed, the mean of is , while has mean zero by the mean value property for harmonic functions. Each factor has modulus at most one. Applying the monotone convergence theorem to the negative logarithms of the finite products yields the radial logarithmic mean of a Blaschke product:
The Blaschke condition implies : only finitely many zeros have modulus below , and for . Every summand tends to zero and is bounded in absolute value by . The dominated convergence theorem for this series, together with , therefore gives
This also covers finite products and constant unimodular products. Zeros on a circle create integrable logarithmic singularities and do not change the conclusion.
First construct a holomorphic function without requiring boundedness. Separate the finitely many zeros at zero into , and enumerate the remaining prescribed zeros as . Since , there is no interior accumulation point and every prescribed point has finite multiplicity. Using the Weierstrass elementary factors, set
For a compact disc , choose with . Eventually . The power series identity
gives an absolutely summable uniform bound. The infinite product convergence from logarithmic tails therefore makes the tail holomorphic and nonvanishing on this compact set. The finitely many initial factors have exactly their prescribed zeros, with the prescribed multiplicities. Hence has exactly the required zero sequence. This is a direct canonical product construction for zeros escaping to the disk boundary.
For a nonzero bounded holomorphic function, Jensen's formula bounds after separating the zero at zero. Thus the Blaschke condition is necessary; the Blaschke product construction makes it sufficient. Use the curvature-minus-one convention for Hyperbolic distance in the Poincare disc:
The latter lies between and . Consequently the precise bounded-function criterion is
This counts multiplicities; the finitely many occurrences at zero cause no problem.
For the requested hyperbolic zero estimate for a Blaschke product, the pseudohyperbolic distance identity is
If is not a zero, . The real function has and , so . Thus . Apply this to each factor, including factors at zero, and then pass from finite products to the Blaschke product by locally uniform convergence:
At a zero of the left side is zero, so the inequality is immediate; the logarithmic calculation at is unnecessary. The unimodular constant contributes nothing. Away from the zeros the product is nonzero, so the same inequality also bounds the sum and shows it is finite there.
Use the curvature hyperbolic metric . For the disk Möbius transformation , set . The hyperbolic distance satisfies
The triangle inequality gives
Thus convergence of the exponential sum is independent of the base point. Taking the base point zero, it is equivalent to the Blaschke condition . This condition implies that only finitely many terms lie in any compact subdisk, including finitely many repetitions of any point.
To construct the required holomorphic function, for define the Blaschke factor
For , writing gives
Consequently, after the finitely many factors corresponding to small are removed, the sum of converges uniformly on each compact subdisk. Those factors are uniformly close to one, so their logarithms form an absolutely convergent series there. Their product tail is holomorphic and nonvanishing. Including the finitely many removed factors gives the Blaschke product
with exactly the requested zero multiplicities. Each finite product has modulus at most one in the disk, so the limit does too. Hence maps into the open disk and has exactly the prescribed zeros, proving the implication from the summability condition.
The Blaschke product here is taken over distinct points of the orbit; its existence is part of the hypothesis. It is not necessary to assert that every discrete orbit satisfies the Blaschke condition.
The modulus of a Blaschke factor is the pseudohyperbolic distance. Thus, away from the orbit,
The logarithms converge absolutely at such a point, by the compact convergence estimate for the Blaschke product. Every preserves the hyperbolic metric and permutes the orbit. Reindexing this convergent product yields .
The functions and have the same simple zero set, since is a biholomorphism. Their quotient therefore extends holomorphically and without zeros across the orbit. It has modulus one everywhere. The open mapping theorem makes it a constant, denoted . Finally
Since is not identically zero, cancellation gives
This is the automorphy character of an orbit Blaschke product. The equal-modulus argument is essential: equality of zero sets alone would not make the quotient of two bounded holomorphic functions constant.
Zeros are counted with their prescribed finite multiplicities, and the function is not identically zero. The criterion for zero sets in the unit disc is local finiteness: no point of the disc is an accumulation point of the zero sequence, and no point has infinite multiplicity. Necessity follows from the identity theorem for holomorphic functions. For sufficiency, factor a finite number of zeros at zero as . For an infinite sequence of remaining zeros , local finiteness implies . With Weierstrass elementary factors
use . On each compact subdisc, eventually and the logarithm of the tail factor is , bounded in modulus by . These bounds are summable, so infinite product convergence from logarithmic tails gives locally uniform convergence and nonvanishing away from the listed zeros. Its finite initial factors give exactly their multiplicities. For a finite sequence an ordinary polynomial suffices.
Use the curvature-minus-one hyperbolic metric, with length element . Integrating radially gives
Therefore the printed sum condition is equivalent to the Blaschke condition .
To prove necessity for bounded , first suppose and choose a radius with no zero on its circle. Remove the finitely many factors for . The logarithm of the modulus of the remaining zero-free function is harmonic on the closed disc. Its mean value property, together with the mean of being for (expand the logarithm in powers of ), proves Jensen's formula
Let through such radii. Each summand increases to , and for by integration of . Consequently . If has order at zero, apply the argument to , which is still bounded: outside it is bounded by , and inside use the maximum modulus principle. Add the finite contribution of the zeros at zero.
For sufficiency use a Blaschke product. For its normalized Blaschke factor is
On , . The Blaschke condition thus makes the product converge locally uniformly; outside the specified zeros, the tail logarithms converge absolutely and the product is nonzero. Each factor has modulus at most one in the disc, so the limit is bounded by one. A factor supplies any finite multiplicity at zero. This proves
For the elementary inequality, put . Then and
so for .
For any point not among the zeros, the pseudohyperbolic distance formula gives
Apply the proved inequality with to obtain . Sum over finite products and pass to the limit, including factors at zero. This gives
The sum is finite: the triangle inequality gives . If is itself a zero, and the same bound is immediate, so no substitution at the excluded value is needed. A unimodular constant in has no effect.
If “zeros at the points” is interpreted as a set without assigned multiplicities, first delete repeated entries throughout. Otherwise infinitely repeating a single zero would invalidate the claimed necessity of the series condition; the standard zero-sequence convention counts multiplicities.