Defect indices of powers of a contraction

Let A be a contraction on a Hilbert space H. The defect index d_A of A is, by definition, the dimension of the closure of the range of I-A^∗A. We prove that (1) d_Aⁿ?nd_A for all n?0, (2) if, in addition, Aⁿ converges to 0 in the strong operator topology and d_A=1, then d_Aⁿ=n for all finite n,0?n?dimH, and (3) d_A=d_A^∗ implies d_Aⁿ=d_A^n∗ for all n?0. The norm-one index k_A of A is defined as sup{n?0:‖Aⁿ‖=1}. When dimH=m<∞, a lower bound for k_A was obtained before: k_A?(m/d_A)-1. We show that the equality holds if and only if either A is unitary or the eigenvalues of A are all in the open unit disc, d_A divides m and d_Aⁿ=nd_A for all n, 1?n?m/d_A. We also consider the defect index of f(A) for a finite Blaschke product f and show that d_f(A)=d_Aⁿ, where n is the number of zeros of f.