Abstract. An explicit construction characterizing the operator-valued Bergman inner functions is given for a class of vector-valued standard weighted Bergman spaces in the unit disk. These operator-valued Bergman inner functions act as contractive multipliers from the Hardy space into the associated Bergman space, and they have a natural interpretation as transfer functions for a related class of discrete time linear systems. This points to a new interaction between the fields of invariant subspace theory and mathematical systems theory.Let U, X , and Y be general not necessarily separable complex Hilbert spaces, and letbe bounded linear operators. Let n ≥ 1 be an integer. We shall consider operator-valued analytic functions of the formNotice that the function W defined by (0.1) is analytic for z close to the origin and thatThe operator-valued analytic functions of the form (0.1) admit a natural interpretation as transfer functions for a related class of discrete time linear systems. Consider the discrete time linear system generated by the system of recurrence relationsThen the function W given by (0.1) is the transfer function for system (0.2), which means that y(z) = W (z)u(z) (see Theorem 1.1). The notation here is adapted from mathematical systems theory. The space U is the input space, the space Y is the output space, and the space X is the state space of system (0.2). The operator A ∈ L(X ) is called the state space operator, the operator B ∈ L(U, X ) is called the input operator, the operator C ∈ L(X , Y) is called the output operator and the operator D ∈ L(U, Y) is called the feedthrough operator for system (0.2).