Principal Solutions Revisited

The main objective of this paper is to identify principal solutions associated with Sturm-Liouville operators on arbitrary open intervals $(a,b) \subseteq \mathbb{R}$, as introduced by Leighton and Morse in the scalar context in 1936 and by Hartman in the matrix-valued situation in 1957, with Weyl-Titchmarsh solutions, as long as the underlying Sturm-Liouville differential expression is nonoscillatory (resp., disconjugate or bounded from below near an endpoint) and in the limit point case at the endpoint in question. In addition, we derive an explicit formula for Weyl-Titchmarsh functions in this case (the latter appears to be new in the matrix-valued context).Comment: 27 pages, expanded Sect. 2, added reference

A Jost-Pais-type reduction of (modified) Fredholm determinants for semi-separable operators in infinite dimensions

We study the analog of semi-separable integral kernels in $\mathcal{H}$ of the type $$K(x,x')=\begin{cases} F_1(x)G_1(x'), & a<x'< x< b, \\ F_2(x)G_2(x'), & a<x<x'<b, \end{cases}$$ where $-\infty\leq a<b\leq \infty$, and for a.e.\ $x \in (a,b)$, $F_j (x) \in \mathcal{B}_2(\mathcal{H}_j,\mathcal{H})$ and $G_j(x) \in \mathcal{B}_2(\mathcal{H},\mathcal{H}_j)$ such that $F_j(\cdot)$ and $G_j(\cdot)$ are uniformly measurable, and $$\|F_j(\cdot)\|_{\mathcal{B}_2(\mathcal{H}_j,\mathcal{H})} \in L^2((a,b)), \; \|G_j (\cdot)\|_{\mathcal{B}_2(\mathcal{H},\mathcal{H}_j)} \in L^2((a,b)), \quad j=1,2,$$ with $\mathcal{H}$ and $\mathcal{H}_j$, $j=1,2$, complex, separable Hilbert spaces. Assuming that $K(\cdot, \cdot)$ generates a Hilbert-Schmidt operator $\mathbf{K}$ in $L^2((a,b);\mathcal{H})$, we derive the analog of the Jost-Pais reduction theory that succeeds in proving that the modified Fredholm determinant ${\det}_{2, L^2((a,b);\mathcal{H})}(\mathbf{I} - \alpha \mathbf{K})$, $\alpha \in \mathbb{C}$, naturally reduces to appropriate Fredholm determinants in the Hilbert spaces $\mathcal{H}$ (and $\mathcal{H} \oplus \mathcal{H}$). Some applications to Schr\"odinger operators with operator-valued potentials are provided.Comment: 25 pages; typos removed. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1404.073

On a problem in eigenvalue perturbation theory

We consider additive perturbations of the type $K_t=K_0+tW$, $t\in [0,1]$, where $K_0$ and $W$ are self-adjoint operators in a separable Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ and $W$ is bounded. In addition, we assume that the range of $W$ is a generating (i.e., cyclic) subspace for $K_0$. If $\lambda_0$ is an eigenvalue of $K_0$, then under the additional assumption that $W$ is nonnegative, the Lebesgue measure of the set of all $t\in [0,1]$ for which $\lambda_0$ is an eigenvalue of $K_t$ is known to be zero. We recall this result with its proof and show by explicit counterexample that the nonnegativity assumption $W\geq 0$ cannot be removed.Comment: 10 pages; added Lemma 2.4, typos removed; to appear in J. Math. Anal. App

Supersymmetry and Schr\"odinger-type operators with distributional matrix-valued potentials

Building on work on Miura's transformation by Kappeler, Perry, Shubin, and Topalov, we develop a detailed spectral theoretic treatment of Schr\"odinger operators with matrix-valued potentials, with special emphasis on distributional potential coefficients. Our principal method relies on a supersymmetric (factorization) formalism underlying Miura's transformation, which intimately connects the triple of operators $(D, H_1, H_2)$ of the form [D= (0 & A^*, A & 0) \text{in} L^2(\mathbb{R})^{2m} \text{and} H_1 = A^* A, H_2 = A A^* \text{in} L^2(\mathbb{R})^m.] Here $A= I_m (d/dx) + \phi$ in $L^2(\mathbb{R})^m$, with a matrix-valued coefficient $\phi = \phi^* \in L^1_{\text{loc}}(\mathbb{R})^{m \times m}$, $m \in \mathbb{N}$, thus explicitly permitting distributional potential coefficients $V_j$ in $H_j$, $j=1,2$, where [H_j = - I_m \frac{d^2}{dx^2} + V_j(x), \quad V_j(x) = \phi(x)^2 + (-1)^{j} \phi'(x), j=1,2.] Upon developing Weyl--Titchmarsh theory for these generalized Schr\"odinger operators $H_j$, with (possibly, distributional) matrix-valued potentials $V_j$, we provide some spectral theoretic applications, including a derivation of the corresponding spectral representations for $H_j$, $j=1,2$. Finally, we derive a local Borg--Marchenko uniqueness theorem for $H_j$, $j=1,2$, by employing the underlying supersymmetric structure and reducing it to the known local Borg--Marchenko uniqueness theorem for $D$.Comment: 36 page