Compactness in the \(\overline\partial\)-Neumann problem, magnetic Schrödinger operators, and the Aharonov-Bohm effect (Q2570066)

The condition (P) on a pseudoconvex domain \(\Omega\) means that for any \(M>0\) there is a smooth plurisubharmonic function \(\lambda\) with \(0\leq \lambda \leq 1\) such that for all \(z\in \partial \Omega\): \[ \sum _{j,k=1}^{n} \frac {\partial^2 \lambda}{\partial z_j\partial \overline z_k} t_j\overline t_k\geq M| t| ^2, \quad \forall t=(t_1,t_2,\cdots ,t_n)\in \mathbb{C}^n, \] which was introduced by \textit{D. W. Catlin} [Proc. Sympos. Pure Math. 41, 39--49 (1984; Zbl 0578.32031)] to prove the compactness of the \(\overline \partial\)-Neumann operator. In order to have more clear picture about the relation between the condition (P) and the compactness of the \(\overline \partial\)-Neumann operator, Hartogs domain in \(\mathbb C^2\) is a good example to look at. Let \[ \Omega =\{(z,w)\in \mathbb C^2 :| w| <\exp(-\phi (z)), | z| <2\}, \] where \(\phi \) is a plurisubharmonic function. Along the line of \textit{S. Fu} and \textit{E. J. Straube} [Math. Anal. Appl. 271, No. 1, 267--282 (2002); correction ibid. 280, No. 1, 195--196 (2003; Zbl 1098.32021)], where they prove that the conditon (P) and the compactness of the \(\overline \partial\)-Neumann operator are equivalent the lowest eigenvalues of a sequence of Schrödinger operator with and without magnetic field, respectively, goes to infinity for smooth \(\Omega\). The main results in this paper are (a) If \(\Omega\) is smooth, then conditon (P) is equivalent to the compactness of the \(\overline \partial\)-Neumann operator. (b) There exists a nonsmooth \(\Omega\) where the \(\overline \partial\)-Neumann operator is compact but the condition (P) is not satisfied. Since the goal of this paper is to work on \(\Omega\) with minimal regularity, the authors have to do deeper analysis to get the results. And the nonsmooth example is based on the Aharonov-Bohm phenomenon of quantum physics.