Unitarizable representations and fixed points of groups of biholomorphic transformations of operator balls

We show that the open unit ball of the space of operators from a finite-dimensional Hilbert space into a separable Hilbert space (we call it “operator ball”) has a restricted form of normal structure if we endow it with a hyperbolic metric (which is an analogue of the standard hyperbolic metric on the unit disc in the complex plane).We use this result to get a fixed point theorem for groups of biholomorphic automorphisms of the operator ball. The fixed point theorem is used to show that a bounded representation in a separable Hilbert space which has an invariant indefinite quadratic form with finitely many negative squares is unitarizable (equivalent to a unitary representation).We apply this result to find dual pairs of invariant subspaces in Pontryagin spaces. In Appendix A we present results of Itai Shafrir about hyperbolic metrics on the operator ball. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.