This paper studies three natural pre-orders of increasing generality on the
set of all completely non-unitary partial isometries with equal defect indices.
We show that the problem of determining when one partial isometry is less than
another with respect to these pre-orders is equivalent to the existence of a
bounded (or isometric) multiplier between two natural reproducing kernel
Hilbert spaces of analytic functions. For large classes of partial isometries
these spaces can be realized as the well-known model subspaces and
deBranges-Rovnyak spaces. This characterization is applied to investigate
properties of these pre-orders and the equivalence classes they generate.Comment: 30 pages. To appear in Journal of Operator Theor
