Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
We examine spectral behavior of irreducible tuples that do not admit the boundary property. In particular, we prove under some mild assumption that the spectral radius of such an $m$-tuple $\left( {{T}_{1}},\,.\,.\,.\,,\,{{T}_{m}} \right)$must be the operator norm of $T_{1}^{*}\,{{T}_{1}}\,+\,.\,.\,.\,+\,T_{m}^{*}{{T}_{m}}$. We use this simple observation to ensure the boundary property for an irreducible, essentially normal, joint q-isometry, provided it is not a joint isometry. We further exhibit a family of reproducing Hilbert $\mathbb{C}\left[ {{z}_{1}},\,.\,.\,.\,,{{z}_{m}} \right]$-modules (of which the Drury–Arveson Hilbert module is a prototype) with the property that any two nested unitarily equivalent submodules are indeed equal.