This thesis work is about commutativity which is a very important topic in mathematics, physics, engineering and many other fields. Two processes are said to be commutative if the order of "operation" of these processes does not matter. A typical example of two processes in real life that are not commutative is the process of opening the door and the process of going through the door. In mathematics, it is well known that matrix multiplication is not always commutative. Commutating operators play an essential role in mathematics, physics engineering and many other fields. A typical example of the importance of commutativity comes from signal processing. Signals pass through filters (often called operators on a Hilbert space by mathematicians) and commutativity of two operators corresponds to having the same result even when filters are interchanged. Many important relations in mathematics, physics and engineering are represented by operators satisfying a number of commutation relations. In chapter two of this thesis we treat commutativity of monomials of operatos satisfying certain commutation relations in relation to one-dimensional dynamical systems. We derive explicit conditions for commutativity of the said monomials in relation to the existence of periodic points of certain one-dimensional dynamical systems. In chapter three, we treat the crossed product algebra for the algebra of piecewise constant functions on given set, describe the commutant of this algebra of functions which happens to be the maximal commutative subalgebra of the crossed product containing this algebra. In chapter four, we give a characterization of the commutant for the algebra of piecewise constant functions on the real line, by comparing commutants for a non decreasing sequence of algebras.

An operator-theoretic formulation of the interpolation problem posed by Nevanlinna and Pick in the early twentieth century asks for conditions under which there exists a multiplier of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space that interpolates a specified set of data. Paul S. Muhly and Baruch Solel have shown that their theory for operator algebras built from W*-correspondences provides an appropriate context for generalizing this classic question. Their reproducing kernel W*-correspondences are spaces of functions that generalize the reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. Their Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation theorem, which is proved using commutant lifting, implies that the algebra of multipliers of the reproducing kernel W*-correspondence associated with a certain W*-version of the classic Szegö kernel may be identified with their primary operator algebra of interest, the Hardy algebra. To provide a context for generalizing another familiar topic in operator theory, the study of the weighted Hardy spaces, Muhly and Solel have recently expanded their theory to include operator-valued weights. This creates a new family of reproducing kernel W*-correspondences that includes certain, though not all, classic weighted Hardy spaces. It is the purpose of this thesis to generalize several of Muhly and Solel's results to the weighted setting and investigate the function-theoretic properties of the resulting spaces. We give two principal results. The first is a weighted version of Muhly and Solel's commutant lifting theorem, which we obtain by making use of Parrott's lemma. The second main result, which in fact follows from the first, is a weighted Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation theorem. Other results, several of which follow from the two primary results, include the construction of an orthonormal basis for the nonzero tensor product of two W*-corrrespondences, a double commutant theorem, the identification of several function-theoretic properties of the elements in the reproducing kernel W*-correspondence associated with a weighted W*-Szegö kernel as well as the elements in its algebra of mutlipliers, and the presentation of a relationship between this algebra of multipliers and a weighted Hardy algebra. In addition, we consider a candidate for a W*-version of the complete Pick property and investigate the aforementioned weighted W*-Szegö kernel in its light.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The main part of this thesis, Chapter 4, contains results on the commutant of a semigroup of operators defined on the Hardy Space of the disk where the operators have hyperbolic non-automorphic symbols. In particular, we show in Chapter 5 that the commutant of the semigroup of operators is in one-to-one correspondence with a Banach algebra of bounded analytic functions on an open half-plane. This algebra of functions is a subalgebra of the standard Newton space. Chapter 4 extends previous work done on maps with interior fixed point to the case of the symbol of the composition operator having a boundary fixed point.