Newtonian scattering in Hilbert space (Q806001): Difference between revisions

The theory of scattering for classical Newtonian mechanics has been some what neglected. The authors study in detail the case of a particle in a potential field \(F(x)=-V'(x)\in C^ 1({\mathbb{R}})\), \(\ddot x=F(x)\), \(x(0)=q\), \(\dot x(0)=p\). The above initial value problem generates the map \(T(t):\Sigma \to \Sigma,\quad \Sigma \equiv {\mathbb{R}}^ 2\), defined by \(T(t)(q,p)=(x(t,q,p),\dot x(t,q,p)).\) In the above, \(V(x)\to 0\) as \(| x| \to \infty\), \(| F(x)| \leq c| x|^{-\alpha}\), \(\alpha >2\), for \(| x| \geq R\) and \(| F(x)-F(y)| \leq cr^{-\beta}| x-y|\), \(| x|\), \(| y| \geq r>R\). The free dynamics is governed by \(T_ 0(t)(q,p)=(q+pt,p)\). Let \(\Sigma_ 0=\{(q,p)\in \Sigma\), \(p\neq 0\}\) and \(\Sigma_ b^{\pm}=\{(q,p)\in \Sigma\), x is bounded for \(t^{\pm}\}\). It is known that the wave operators \(\Omega_{\pm}=\lim_{t\to \pm \infty}T_ 0(-t) T(t)\) exist uniformly on compact subsets of \(\Sigma_ 0\). The authors make a more refined analysis of this problem in \(L^ 2(\Sigma)\). The unitary operator \((U(t)f)(\sigma)=f(T(-t)\sigma)\) has a self-adjoint generator H in \(L^ 2(\Sigma)\). Let \({\mathcal E}=\{(x,0):\) \(V'(x)=0\}\). They show that the union of the set of all homoclinic orbits and \({\mathcal E}\) has measure. Let \(\Sigma_ b'=\Sigma_ b\setminus \{\cup\) homoclinic orbits \(\cup {\mathcal E}\}\). It follows that one may restrict ones attention to \(L^ 2(\Sigma_ b')\). Let U be an open connected subset of \(\Sigma_ b'\) consisting of periodic orbits. Let \(E=(y^ 2/2)+V(x)\) and \(E_ 1,E_ 2\) be the energies corresponding to the boundary of U. Then the period function T(E): \((E_ 1,E_ 2)\to {\mathbb{R}}\) assigns to each orbit in U its minimum period. The pincipal result of the paper is that the behaviour of the period function governs the type of spectrum of \(H_ U=H\upharpoonright L^ 2(U)\). In fact, if U is such that the zeros of \(T'(E)\) are isolated then \(H_ U\) is absolutely continuous on \(H_{pp}(H_ U)^{\perp}\).