Semicrossed products of operator algebras and their C*-envelopes

Let $A$ be a unital operator algebra and let $alpha$ be an automorphism of $A$ that extends to a *-automorphism of its $ca$-envelope $cenv (A)$. In this paper we introduce the isometric semicrossed product $A times_{alpha}^{is} bbZ^+ $ and we show that $cenv(A times_{alpha}^{is} bbZ^+) simeq cenv (A) times_{alpha} bbZ$. In contrast, the $ca$-envelope of the familiar contractive semicrossed product $A times_{alpha} bbZ^+ $ may not equal $cenv (A) times_{alpha} bbZ$. Our main tool for calculating $ca$-envelopes for semicrossed products is the concept of a relative semicrossed product of an operator algebra, which we explore in the more general context of injective endomorphisms. As an application, we extend a recent result of Davidson and Katsoulis to tensor algebras of $ca$-correspondences. We show that if $T_{X}^{+}$ is the tensor algebra of a $ca$-correspondence $(X, fA)$ and $alpha$ a completely isometric automorphism of $T_{X}^{+}$ that fixes the diagonal elementwise, then the contractive semicrossed product satisfies $ cenv(T_{X}^{+} times_{alpha} bbZ^+)simeq O_{X} times_{alpha} bbZ$, where $O_{X}$ denotes the Cuntz-Pimsner algebra of $(X, fA)$.