By suitably extending a Feynman-Kac formula of Simon [Canadian Math. Soc. Conf. Proc, 28 (2000), 317-321], we study one-parameter semigroups generated by (the negative of) rather general Schroedinger operators, which may be unbounded from below and include a magnetic vector potential. In particular, a common domain of essential self-adjointness for such a semigroup is specified. Moreover, each member of the semigroup is proven to be a maximal Carleman operator with a continuous integral kernel given by a Brownian-bridge expectation. The results are used to show that the spectral projections of the generating Schroedinger operator also act as Carleman operators with continuous integral kernels. Applications to Schroedinger operators with rather general random scalar potentials include a rigorous justification of an integral-kernel representation of their integrated density of states - a relation frequently used in the physics literature on disordered solids.
We study quantum dynamical semigroups generated by noncommutative unbounded elliptic operators which can be written as Lindblad type unbounded generators. Under appropriate conditions, we first construct the minimal quantum dynamical semigroups for the generators and then use Chebotarev and Fagnola's sufficient conditions for conservativity to show that the semigroups are conservative.
In this paper we consider magnetic Schroedinger operators on the two-dimensional unit disk with a radially symmetric magnetic field which explodes to infinity at the boundary. We prove a bound for the eigenvalue moments and a bound for the number of negative eigenvalues for such operators.
We analyze two different confining mechanisms for Lévy flights in the presence of external potentials. One of them is due to a conservative force in the corresponding Langevin equation. Another is implemented by Levy-Schroedinger semigroups which induce so-called topological Levy processes (Levy flights with locally modified jump rates in the master equation). Given a stationary probability function (pdf) associated with the Langevin-based fractional Fokker-Planck equation, we demonstrate that generically there exists a topological Lévy process with the very same invariant pdf and in the rever…
Evans-Hudson flows are constructed for a class of quantum dynamical semigroups with unbounded generator on UHF algebras, which appeared in \cite{Ma}. It is shown that these flows are unital and covariant. Ergodicity of the flows for the semigroups associated with partial states is also discussed.
We prove a Feynman-Kac formula for Schrodinger operators with potentials V(x) that obey (for all ε> 0): V(x) \geq - ε|x|^2 - C_ε. Even though e^{-tH} is an unbounded operator, any ϕ, ψ\in L^2 with compact support lie in D(e^{-tH}) and <ϕ, e^{-tH}ψ> is given by a Feynman-Kac formula.
We prove conditions on potentials which imply that the sum of the negative eigenvalues of the Schroeodinger operator is finite. We use a method for bounding eigenvalues based on estimates of the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of semigroup differences and on complex analysis
Dynamical semigroups have become the key structure for describing open system dynamics in all of physics. Bounded generators are known to be of a standard form, due to Gorini, Kossakowski, Sudarshan and Lindblad. This form is often used also in the unbounded case, but rather little is known about the general form of unbounded generators. In this paper we first give a precise description of the standard form in the unbounded case, emphasizing intuition, and collecting and even proving the basic results around it. We also give a cautionary example showing that the standard form must not be read …
Intrinsic Ultracontractivity for a class of Schroedinger Semigroups in $\mathrm{L}^{2}\left( \mathbb{R}^{n} \right)$ using Log-Sobolev-inequalities and duality arguments
We consider Schroedinger operators on compact and non-compact (finite) metric graphs. For such operators we analyse their spectra, prove that their resolvents can be represented as integral operators and introduce trace-class regularisations of the resolvents. Our main result is a complete asymptotic expansion of the trace of the (regularised) heat-semigroup generated by the Schroedinger operator. We also determine the leading coefficients in the expansion explicitly.
We analyze new phenomena arising in linear damped wave equations on unbounded domains when the damping is allowed to become unbounded at infinity. We prove the generation of a contraction semigroup, study the relation between the spectra of the semigroup generator and the associated quadratic operator function, the convergence of non-real eigenvalues in the asymptotic regime of diverging damping on a subdomain, and we investigate the appearance of essential spectrum on the negative real axis. We further show that the presence of the latter prevents exponential estimates for the semigroup and t…
We consider a simple modification of the 1D-Laplacian where non-mixed interface conditions occur at the boundaries of a finite interval. It has recently been shown that Schrödinger operators having this form allow a new approach to the transverse quantum transport through resonant heterostructures. In this perspective, it is important to control the deformations effects introduced on the spectrum and on the time propagator by this class of non-selfadjont perturbations. In order to obtain uniform-in-time estimates of the perturbed semigroup, our strategy consists in constructing stationary wave…
We study the heat semigroup generated by two-dimensional Schroedinger operators with compactly supported magnetic field. We show that if the field is radial, then the large time behavior of the associated heat kernel is determined by its total flux. We also establish some on-diagonal heat kernel estimates and discuss their applications for solutions to the heat equation. An exact formula for the heat kernel, and for its large time asymptotic, is derived in the case of the Aharonov-Bohm magnetic field.
In this paper we prove that the initial-boundary value problem for the forced non-linear Schroedinger equation with a potential on the half-line is locally and (under stronger conditions) globally well posed, i.e. that there is a unique solution that depends continuously on the force at the boundary and on the initial data. We allow for a large class of unbounded potentials. Actually, for local solutions we have no restriction on the grow at infinity of the positive part of the potential, and for global solutions very mild assumptions that allow, for example, for exponential grow.
In the Euclidean space of any dimension d, we consider the heat semigroup generated by the magnetic Schroedinger operator from which an inverse-square potential is subtracted in order to make the operator critical in the magnetic-free case. Assuming that the magnetic field is compactly supported, we show that the polynomial large-time behaviour of the heat semigroup is determined by the eigenvalue problem for a magnetic Schroedinger operator on the (d-1)-dimensional sphere whose vector potential reflects the behaviour of the magnetic field at the space infinity. From the spectral problem on th…
Path integral representations for generalized Schrödinger operators obtained under a class of Bernstein functions of the Laplacian are established. The one-to-one correspondence of Bernstein functions with Lévy subordinators is used, thereby the role of Brownian motion entering the standard Feynman-Kac formula is taken here by subordinated Brownian motion. As specific examples, fractional and relativistic Schrödinger operators with magnetic field and spin are covered. Results on self-adjointness of these operators are obtained under conditions allowing for singular magnetic fields and singular…
It is shown how to construct *-homomorphic quantum stochastic Feller cocycles for certain unbounded generators, and so obtain dilations of strongly continuous quantum dynamical semigroups on C* algebras; this generalises the construction of a classical Feller process and semigroup from a given generator. The construction is possible provided the generator satisfies an invariance property for some dense subalgebra A_0 of the C* algebra A and obeys the necessary structure relations; the iterates of the generator, when applied to a generating set for A_0, must satisfy a growth condition. Furtherm…
With a view toward fractal spaces, by using a Korevaar-Schoen space approach, we introduce the class of bounded variation (BV) functions in a general framework of strongly local Dirichlet spaces with a heat kernel satisfying sub-Gaussian estimates. Under a weak Bakry-Émery curvature type condition, which is new in this setting, this BV class is identified with a heat semigroup based Besov class. As a consequence of this identification, properties of BV functions and associated BV measures are studied in detail. In particular, we prove co-area formulas, global $L^1$ Sobolev embeddings and isope…
For a densely defined self-adjoint operator $\mathcal{H}$ in Hilbert space $\mathcal{F}$ the operator $\exp(-it\mathcal{H})$ is the evolution operator for the Schrödinger equation $iψ'_t=\mathcal{H}ψ$, i.e. if $ψ(0,x)=ψ_0(x)$ then $ψ(t,x)=(\exp(-it\mathcal{H})ψ_0)(x)$ for $x\in Q.$ The space $\mathcal{F}$ here is the space of wave functions $ψ$ defined on an abstract space $Q$, the configuration space of a quantum system, and $\mathcal{H}$ is the Hamiltonian of the system. In this paper the operator $\exp(-it\mathcal{H})$ for all real values of $t$ is expressed in terms of the family of self-a…
Devices exhibiting the integer quantum Hall effect can be modeled by one-electron Schroedinger operators describing the planar motion of an electron in a perpendicular, constant magnetic field, and under the influence of an electrostatic potential. The electron motion is confined to bounded or unbounded subsets of the plane by confining potential barriers. The edges of the confining potential barriers create edge currents. This is the second of two papers in which we review recent progress and prove explicit lower bounds on the edge currents associated with one- and two-edge geometries. In thi…
The Laplacian in an unbounded tubular neighbourhood of a hyperplane with non-Hermitian complex-symmetric Robin-type boundary conditions is investigated in the limit when the width of the neighbourhood diminishes. We show that the Laplacian converges in a norm resolvent sense to a self-adjoint Schroedinger operator in the hyperplane whose potential is expressed solely in terms of the boundary coupling function. As a consequence, we are able to explain some peculiar spectral properties of the non-Hermitian Laplacian by known results for Schroedinger operators.
Devices exhibiting the integer quantum Hall effect can be modeled by one-electron Schroedinger operators describing the planar motion of an electron in a perpendicular, constant magnetic field, and under the influence of an electrostatic potential. The electron motion is confined to unbounded subsets of the plane by confining potential barriers. The edges of the confining potential barrier create edge currents. In this, the first of two papers, we prove explicit lower bounds on the edge currents associated with one-edge, unbounded geometries formed by various confining potentials. This work ex…
We prove that a first order linear differential operator G with unbounded operator coefficients is Fredholm on spaces of functions on the real line with values in a reflexive Banach space if and only if the corresponding strongly continuous evolution family has exponential dichotomies on both semiaxises and a pair of the ranges of the dichotomy projections is Fredholm, and that the Fredholm index of G is equal to the Fredholm index of the pair. The operator G is the generator of the evolution semigroup associated with the evolution family. In the case when the evolution family is the propagato…
Quantum Markov Semigroups (QMSs) originally arose in the study of the evolutions of irreversible open quantum systems. Mathematically, they are a generalization of classical Markov semigroups where the underlying function space is replaced by a non-commutative operator algebra. In the case when the QMS is uniformly continuous, theorems due to Lindblad \cite{lindblad}, Stinespring \cite{stinespring}, and Kraus \cite{kraus} imply that the generator of the semigroup has the form $$L(A)=\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}V_n^*AV_n +GA+AG^*$$ where $V_n$ and G are elements of the underlying operator algebra. In th…
We study resolvent estimates and maximal regularity of the Stokes operator in $L^q$-spaces with exponential weights in the axial directions of unbounded cylinders of $\R^n,n\geq 3$. For a straight cylinder we use exponential weights in the axial direction and Muckenhoupt weights in the cross-section. Next, for cylinders with several exits to infinity we prove that the Stokes operator in $L^q$-spaces with exponential weights generates an exponentially decaying analytic semigroup and has maximal regularity. The proof for straight cylinders uses an operator-valued Fourier multiplier theorem and u…
Quantum stochastic cocycles provide a basic model for time-homogeneous Markovian evolutions in a quantum setting, and a direct counterpart in continuous time to quantum random walks, in both the Schrodinger and Heisenberg pictures. This paper is a sequel to one in which correspondences were established between classes of quantum stochastic cocycle on an operator space or C*-algebra, and classes of Schur-action `global' semigroup on associated matrix spaces over the operator space. In this paper we investigate the stochastic generation of cocycles via the generation of their corresponding globa…