We provide a very general result that identifies the essential spectrum of broad classes of operators as exactly equal to the closure of the union of the spectra of suitable limits at infinity. Included is a new result on the essential spectra when potentials are asymptotic to isospectral tori. We also recover with a unified framework the HVZ theorem and Krein's results on orthogonal polynomials with finite essential spectra.
Prüfer variables are a standard tool in spectral theory, developed originally for perturbations of the free Schrödinger operator. They were generalized by Kiselev, Remling, and Simon to perturbations of an arbitrary Schrödinger operator. We adapt these generalized Prufer variables to the setting of Jacobi and Szegő recursions. We present an application to random $L^2$ perturbations of Jacobi and CMV matrices, and an application to decaying oscillatory perturbations of periodic Jacobi and CMV matrices.
We prove that Jacobi, CMV, and Schrödinger operators, which are reflectionless on a homogeneous set E (in the sense of Carleson), under the assumption of a Blaschke-type condition on their discrete spectra accumulating at E, have purely absolutely continuous spectrum on E.
We consider continuous cocycles arising from CMV and Jacobi matrices. Assuming the Verblunsky and Jacobi coefficients arise from generalized skew-shifts, we prove that uniform hyperbolicity of the associated cocycles is $C^0$-dense. This implies that the associated CMV and Jacobi matrices have Cantor spectrum for a generic continuous sampling map.
We provide a concise, yet fairly complete discussion of the concept of essential closures of subsets of the real axis and their intimate connection with the topological support of absolutely continuous measures. As an elementary application of the notion of the essential closure of subsets of $\bbR$ we revisit the fact that CMV, Jacobi, and Schrödinger operators, reflectionless on a set E of positive Lebesgue measure, have absolutely continuous spectrum on the essential closure of the set E (with uniform multiplicity two on E). Though this result in the case of Schrödinger and Jacobi operators…
Necessary and sufficient conditions are presented for a measure to be the spectral measure of a finite range perturbation of a Jacobi or CMV operator from a finite gap isospectral torus. The special case of eventually periodic operators solves an open problem of Simon [25, D.2.7]. We also solve the inverse resonance problem: it is shown that an operator is completely determined by the set of its eigenvalues and resonances, and we provide necessary and sufficient conditions on their configuration for such an operator to exist.
Reflectionless CMV matrices are studied using scattering theory. By changing a single Verblunsky coefficient a full-line CMV matrix can be decoupled and written as the sum of two half-line operators. Explicit formulas for the scattering matrix associated to the coupled and decoupled operators are derived. In particular, it is shown that a CMV matrix is reflectionless iff the scattering matrix is off-diagonal which in turn provides a short proof of an important result of [Breuer-Ryckman-Simon]. These developments parallel those recently obtained for Jacobi matrices.
Relations between half- and full-lattice CMV operators with scalar- and matrix-valued Verblunsky coefficients are investigated. In particular, the decoupling of full-lattice CMV operators into a direct sum of two half-lattice CMV operators by a perturbation of minimal rank is studied. Contrary to the Jacobi case, decoupling a full-lattice CMV matrix by changing one of the Verblunsky coefficients results in a perturbation of twice the minimal rank. The explicit form for the minimal rank perturbation and the resulting two half-lattice CMV matrices are obtained. In addition, formulas relating the…
We establish concrete criteria for fully supported absolutely continuous spectrum for ergodic CMV matrices and purely absolutely continuous spectrum for limit-periodic CMV matrices. We proceed by proving several variational estimates on the measure of the spectrum and the vanishing set of the Lyapunov exponent for CMV matrices, which represent CMV analogues of results obtained for Schrödinger operators due to Y.\ Last in the early 1990s. Having done so, we combine those estimates with results from inverse spectral theory to obtain purely absolutely continuous spectrum.
We prove an averaging formula for the derivative of the absolutely continuous part of the density of states measure for an ergodic family of CMV matrices. As a consequence, we show that the spectral type of such a family is almost surely purely absolutely continuous if and only if the density of states is absolutely continuous and the Lyapunov exponent vanishes almost everywhere with respect to the same. Both of these results are CMV operator analogues of theorems obtained by Kotani for Schrödinger operators.
For the standard symplectic forms on Jacobi and CMV matrices, we compute Poisson brackets of OPRL and OPUC, and relate these to other basic Poisson brackets and to Jacobians of basic changes of variable.
We prove general comparison theorems for eigenvalues of perturbed Schrodinger operators that allow proof of Lieb--Thirring bounds for suitable non-free Schrodinger operators and Jacobi matrices.
For bounded linear operators $A,B$ on a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ we show the validity of the estimate $$ \sum_{λ\in σ_d (B)} \dist(λ, \overline{\num}(A))^p \leq \| B-A \|_{\mathcal{S}_p}^p$$ and apply it to recover and improve some Lieb-Thirring type inequalities for non-selfadjoint Jacobi and Schrödinger operators.
We consider $C=A+B$ where $A$ is selfadjoint with a gap $(a,b)$ in its spectrum and $B$ is (relatively) compact. We prove a general result allowing $B$ of indefinite sign and apply it to obtain a $(δV)^{d/2}$ bound for perturbations of suitable periodic Schrodinger operators and a (not quite)Lieb-Thirring bound for perturbations of algebro-geometric almost periodic Jacobi matrices.
The main issue we address in the present paper are the new models for completely non-unitary contractions with rank one defect operators acting on some Hilbert space of dimension $N\leq\infty$. This model complements nicely the well-known models of Liv$\rm{\check{s}}$ic and Sz.-Nagy--Foias. We show that each such an operator is unitarily equivalent to some truncated CMV matrix obtained from the ``full'' CMV matrix by deleting the first row and the first column, and acting in $\ell^2$ ($\dC^N$). This result can be viewed as a nonunitary version of the famous characterization of unitary operator…
We announce three results in the theory of Jacobi matrices and Schrödinger operators. First, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for a measure to be the spectral measure of a Schrödinger operator $-\f{d^2}{dx^2} +V(x)$ on $L^2 (0,\infty)$ with $V\in L^2 (0,\infty)$ and $u(0)=0$ boundary condition. Second, we give necessary and sufficient conditions on the Jacobi parameters for the associated orthogonal polynomials to have Szegő asymptotics. Finally, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions on a measure to be the spectral measure of a Jacobi matrix with exponential decay at a give…
We prove that limit-periodic Dirac operators generically have spectra of zero Lebesgue measure and that a dense set of them have spectra of zero Hausdorff dimension. The proof combines ideas of Avila from a Schrödinger setting with a new commutation argument for generating open spectral gaps. This overcomes an obstacle previously observed in the literature; namely, in Schrödinger-type settings, translation of the spectral measure corresponds to small $L^\infty$-perturbations of the operator data, but this is not true for Dirac or CMV operators. The new argument is much more model-independent. …
One of the first theorems in perturbation theory claims that for an arbitrary self-adjoint operator A there exists a perturbation B of Hilbert-Schmidt class, which destroys completely the absolutely continuous spectrum of A (von Neumann). However, if A is the discrete free 1-D Schrödinger operator and B is a Jacobi matrix the a.c. spectrum remains perfectly the same. Moreover, Killip and Simon described explicitly the spectral properties for such A+B. Jointly with Damanik they generalized this result to the case of perturbations of periodic Jacobi matrices. Recall that the spectrum of a period…
For Jacobi matrices with a_n = 1+(-1)^n alpha n^{-gamma}, b_n = (-1)^n beta n^{-gamma}, we study bound states and the SzegHo condition. We provide a new proof of Nevai's result that if gamma > 1/2, the Szego condition holds, which works also if one replaces (-1)^n by cos(mu n). We show that if alpha = 0, beta not equal to 0, and gamma < 1/2, the Szego condition fails. We also show that if gamma = 1, alpha and beta are small enough (beta^2 + 8 alpha^2 < 1/24 will do), then the Jacobi matrix has finitely many bound states (for alpha = 0, beta large, it has infinitely many).
As an application of the Gordon lemma for orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle, we prove that for a generic set of quasiperiodic Verblunsky coefficients the corresponding two-sided CMV operator has purely singular continuous spectrum. We use a similar argument to that of the Boshernitzan-Damanik result that establishes the corresponding theorem for the discrete Schrödinger operator.
We consider Jacobi matrices and Schrodinger operators that are reflectionless on an interval. We give a systematic development of a certain parametrization of this class, in terms of suitable spectral data, that is due to Marchenko. Then some applications of these ideas are discussed.
A discrete analogue of a Schrodinger type operator proposed by J. Bellissard has a singular continuous spectrum. In this remark we answer the conjecture formulated by D. Bessis, M. Mehta and P. Moussa on the coefficients of that operator. It turns out that the coefficients have a more complicated behavior than it was conjectured.
We explore the sparsity of Weyl-Titchmarsh $m$-functions of discrete Schrödinger operators. Due to this, the set of their $m$-functions cannot be dense on the set of those for Jacobi operators. All this reveals why an inverse spectral theory for discrete Schrödinger operators via their spectral measures should be difficult. To obtain the result, de Branges theory of canonical systems is applied to work on them, instead of Weyl-Titchmarsh $m$-functions.
We extend in this work the Jitomirskaya-Last inequality and Last-Simoncriterion for the absolutely continuous spectral component of a half-line Schrödinger operator to the special class of matrix-valued Jacobi operators $H:l^2(\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{C})\rightarrow l^2(\mathbb{Z},\mathbb{C})$ given by the law $[H \textbf{u}]_{n} := D_{n - 1} \textbf{u}_{n - 1} + D_{n} \textbf{u}_{n + 1} + V_{n} \textbf{u}_{n}$, where $(D_n)_n$ and $(V_n)_n$ are bilateral sequences of $l\times l$ self-adjoint matrices such that $0<\inf_{n\in\mathbb{Z}}s_l[D_n]\le\sup_{n\in\mathbb{Z}}s_1[D_n]<\infty$ (here, $s_k[A]$ …
The present paper is about Bernstein-type estimates for Jacobi polynomials and their applications to various branches in mathematics. This is an old topic but we want to add a new wrinkle by establishing some intriguing connections with dispersive estimates for a certain class of Schrödinger equations whose Hamiltonian is given by the generalized Laguerre operator. More precisely, we show that dispersive estimates for the Schrödinger equation associated with the generalized Laguerre operator are connected with Bernstein-type inequalities for Jacobi polynomials. We use known uniform estimates f…
Jacobi matrices probably are the most classical object in spectral theory, while CMV matrices are a comparably fresh one, although they are related to a very classical topic, namely to orhtogonal polynomials on the unit circle (in the same way as Jacobi matrices are related to orhogonal polynomials on the real axis). We will discuss the third member of this family. Our matrices are generated by the orthonormal systems of functions related to the so-called Strong Moment Problem. For this reason we call them SMP matrices. For instance, one can describe the spectral sets of periodic SMP matrices.…
One of the first and therefore most important theorems in perturbation theory claims that for an arbitrary self-adjoint operator A there exists a perturbation B of Hilbert-Schmidt class with arbitrary small operator norm, which destroys completely the absolutely continuos (a.c.) spectrum of the initial operator A (von Neumann). However, if A is the discrete free 1-D Schrödinger operator and B is an arbitrary Jacobi matrix (of Hilbert-Schmidt class) the a.c. spectrum remains perfectly the same, that is, the interval [-2,2]. Moreover, Killip and Simon described explicitly the spectral properties…
We study one-dimensional random Jacobi operators corresponding to strictly ergodic dynamical systems. In this context, we characterize the spectrum of these operators by non-uniformity of the transfer matrices and the set where the Lyapunov exponent vanishes. Adapting this result to subshifts satisfying the so-called Boshernitzan condition, it turns out that the spectrum is supported on a Cantor set with Lebesgue measure zero. This generalizes earlier results for Schrödinger operators.
We consider semi-infinite Jacobi matrices corresponding to a point interaction for the discrete Schrödinger operator. Our goal is to find explicit expressions for the spectral measure, the resolvent and other spectral characteristics of such Jacobi matrices. It turns out that their spectral analysis leads to a new class of orthogonal polynomials generalizing the classical Chebyshev polynomials.
In this paper, a family of random Jacobi matrices, with off-diagonal terms that exhibit power-law growth, is studied. Since the growth of the randomness is slower than that of these terms, it is possible to use methods applied in the study of Schrödinger operators with random decaying potentials. A particular result of the analysis is the existence of operators with arbitrarily fast transport whose spectral measure is zero dimensional. The results are applied to the infinite Gaussian $β$ Ensembles and their spectral properties are analyzed.
In this paper we approximate a Schrödinger operator on $L^2(\R)$ by Jacobi operators on $\ell^2(\Z)$ to provide new proofs of sharp Lieb-Thirring inequalities for the powers $γ=1/2$ and $γ=3/2$. To this end we first investigate spectral inequalities for Jacobi operators. Using the commutation method we present a new, direct proof of a sharp inequality corresponding to a Lieb-Thirring inequality for the power 3/2 on $\ell^2(\Z)$. We also introduce inequalities for higher powers of the eigenvalues as well as for matrix-valued potentials and compare our results to previously established bounds.
We study to what extent Lieb--Thirring inequalities are extendable from self-adjoint to general (possibly non-self-adjoint) Jacobi and Schrödinger operators. Namely, we prove the conjecture of Hansmann and Katriel from [Complex Anal. Oper. Theory 5, No. 1 (2011), 197-218] and answer another open question raised therein. The results are obtained by means of asymptotic analysis of eigenvalues of discrete Schrödinger operators with rectangular barrier potential and complex coupling. Applying the ideas in the continuous setting, we also solve a similar open problem for one-dimensional Schrödinger …
We consider the problem of embedding eigenvalues into the essential spectrum of periodic Jacobi operators, using an oscillating, decreasing potential. To do this we employ a geometric method, previously used to embed eigenvalues into the essential spectrum of the discrete Schrödinger operator. For periodic Jacobi operators we relax the rational dependence conditions on the values of the quasi-momenta from this previous work. We then explore conditions that permit not just the existence of infinitely many subordinate solutions to the formal spectral equation but also the embedding of infinitely…
Let $g(z,x)$ denote the diagonal Green's matrix of a self-adjoint $m\times m$ matrix-valued Schrödinger operator $H= -\f{d^2}{dx^2}I_m +Q(x)$ in $L^2 (\bbR)^{m}$, $m\in\bbN$. One of the principal results proven in this paper states that for a fixed $x_0\in\bbR$ and all $z\in\bbC_+$, $g(z,x_0)$ and $g^\prime (z,x_0)$ uniquely determine the matrix-valued $m\times m$ potential $Q(x)$ for a.e.~$x\in\bbR$. We also prove the following local version of this result. Let $g_j(z,x)$, $j=1,2$ be the diagonal Green's matrices of the self-adjoint Schrödinger operators $H_j=-\f{d^2}{dx^2}I_m +Q_j(x)$ in $L^…
We present certain results on the direct and inverse spectral theory of the Jacobi operator with complex periodic coefficients. For instance, we show that any $N$-th degree polynomial whose leading coefficient is $(-1)^N$ is the Hill discriminant of finitely many discrete $N$-periodic Schrödinger operators (Theorem 1). Also, in the case where the spectrum is a closed interval we prove a result (Theorem 5) which is the analog of Borg's Theorem for the non-self-adjoint Jacobi case.
The discrete spectrum of complex Jacobi matrices that are compact perturbations of the discrete laplacian is under consideration. The rate of stabilization for the the matrix entries which provides finiteness of the discrete spectrum and is sharp in the sense of order is found. The Jacobi matrix with the discrete spectrum having a single limit point is constructed. The results can be viewed as the discrete analogs of the well known theorems by B.S. Pavlov about Schrödinger operators on the half line with a complex potential.
We study the correspondence between almost periodic difference operators and algebraic curves (spectral surfaces). An especial role plays the parametrization of the spectral curves in terms of, so called, branching divisors. The multiplication operator by the covering map with respect to the natural basis in the Hardy space on the surface is the $2d+1$--diagonal matrix; the $d$--root of the product of the Green functions (counting their multiplicities) with respect to all infinite points on the surface is the symbol of the shift operator. We demonstrate an application of our general constructi…
In this paper, we first develop a notion of dominated splitting for $\mathbb M(2,\mathbb C)$-sequences and show it is a stable property under $\|\cdot \|_\infty$-perturbation. Then we show an energy parameter belongs to the spectrum of a Jacobi operator, possibly singular, if and only if the associated Jacobi cocycle does not admit dominated splitting. This generalizes the results obtained by the second author [Z] in the scenario of Schrödinger operators. Finally, we consider dynamically defined Jacobi operators whose base dynamics is only assumed to be topologically transitive. We show an ene…
We study semi-infinite Jacobi matrices $H=H_{0}+V$ corresponding to trace class perturbations $V$ of the "free" discrete Schrödinger operator $H_{0}$. Our goal is to construct various spectral quantities of the operator $H$, such as the weight function, eigenfunctions of its continuous spectrum, the wave operators for the pair $H_{0}$, $H$, the scattering matrix, the spectral shift function, etc. This allows us to find the asymptotic behavior of the orthonormal polynomials $P_{n}(z)$ associated to the Jacobi matrix $H $ as $n\to\infty$. In particular, we consider the case of $z$ inside the spe…
The paper concerns with infinite symmetric block Jacobi matrices $\bf J$ with $p\times p$-matrix entries. We present new conditions for general block Jacobi matrices to be selfadjoint and have discrete spectrum. In our previous papers there was established a close relation between a class of such matrices and symmetric $2p\times 2p$ Dirac operators $\mathrm{\bf D}_{X,α}$ with point interactions in $L^2(\Bbb R; \Bbb C^{2p})$. In particular, their deficiency indices are related by $n_\pm(\mathrm{\bf D}_{X,α})= n_\pm({\bf J}_{X,α})$. For block Jacobi matrices of this class we present several cond…
We consider off-diagonal Jacobi matrices $J$ with (faster-than-exponential) sparse perturbations. We prove (Theorem \ref{onehalf}) that the Fourier transform $\hat{\left\| f\right\| ^{2}dρ}(t)$ of the spectral measure $ρ$ of $J$, whose sparse perturbations are at least separated by a distance $\exp \left(cj(\ln j)^{2}\right) /δ^{j}$, for some $c>1/2,$ $0<δ<1$ and for a dense subset of $C_{0}^{\infty}(-2,2)$-functions $f$, decays as $t^{-1/2}Ω(t)$, uniformly in the spectrum $[-2,2]$, $Ω(t)$ increasing less rapidly than any positive power of $t$, improving earlier results obtained by Simon (Comm…
