Semiclassical eigenvalue estimates for the Pauli operator with strong nonhomogeneous magnetic fields. I: Nonasymptotic Lieb-Thirring-type estimate. (Q1974876)

The authors study the semiclassical limit of the Pauli operator with strong nonhomogeneous magnetic fields. This case is qualitatively different from that corresponding to homogeneous magnetic fields and requires a nontrivial analysis. The Pauli operator describes the motion of a nonrelativistic electron, where the electron spin is important because of its interaction with the magnetic field. The \(3\)-dimensional Pauli operator acts on the space \(L^2({\mathbb R}^3; {\mathbb C}^2)\) of spinor-valued functions and has the form \[ H(h, {\mathbb A}, V)=[{\mathbf \sigma}\cdot (-ih\nabla + {\mathbb A}(x)]^2 +V(x) = (-ih\nabla +{\mathbb A}(x))^2 + V(x) + h{\mathbf \sigma}\cdot {\mathbb B}(x), \] where \({\mathbf \sigma} = (\sigma_1, \sigma_2, \sigma_3)\) is the vector of Pauli spin matrices, \(h\) is the semiclassical parameter, \({\mathbb B}\) is a divergence-free field related to the vector potential \({\mathbb A}\) by \({\mathbb B} =\nabla \times {\mathbb A}\), and \(V(x)\) describes the electric field. The \(2\)-dimensional Pauli operator has essentially the same form. The main result of the paper, Theorem \(1.1\), is an estimate of the Lieb-Thirring-type for the sum of the negative eigenvalues of the Pauli operator. This is important since this sum represents the energy of the noninteracting fermi gas in the external potential \(V\) and the magnetic field \({\mathbb B}\).