Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture for periodic operators with strong perturbations (Q993379): Difference between revisions

\textit{H.\,Bethe} and \textit{A.\,Sommerfeld} [``Elektronentheorie der Metalle'', in: Handbuch Physik 24, Tl.\ 2, 333--622 (1933; Zbl 0008.14302)] conjectured in the 1930's that the number of gaps in the spectrum of the Schrödinger operator \(H:=-\Delta+V\) with a periodic potential \(V\) in \(L^2({\mathbb R}^d)\), \(d\geq 2\), is finite (or equivalently, the spectrum contains a neighborhood of infinity). In the paper under review, the authors consider a selfadjoint pseudodifferential operator \(H=( - \Delta )^{m }+B\), \(m>0\), in \({\mathbb R}^{d}\) which satisfies the following conditions: {\parindent=7mm \begin{itemize}\item[(i)] \(B\) is periodic with respect to a lattice in \({\mathbb R}^d\), \item[(ii)] the symbol of \(B\) is smooth in \(x\), \item[(iii)] the perturbation \(B\) has order less than \(2m\). \end{itemize}} Under these assumptions, it is proved that the spectrum of \(H\) contains a half-line. This, in particular, implies the Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture for the Schrödinger operator with a periodic magnetic potential in all dimensions \(d\geq 2\). The central ingredient of the proof is a partition of the phase into resonant and non-resonant zones and estimates for the volumes of resonant and non-resonant sets.