Normal solvability of elliptic boundary value problems on asymptotically flat manifolds (Q1207125)

The authors consider boundary value problems for elliptic operators on noncompact manifolds with (possibly noncompact) boundary. Even the simple example of the half space shows that the results in the compact case are no longer true in the noncompact situation. One way around this difficulty is to restrict the behavior of the operators at ``infinity'' and replace the usual Sobolev spaces with some weighted ones for which we still get compact embeddings. On a noncompact manifold we must first impose some restrictions on the geometry of the manifold at infinity. This can be done quite elegantly on the SG-manifolds considered by the authors. The resulting conditions take the form of a decaying condition on the Christoffel symbols and the normal vectors which imply the manifold is asymptotically flat. The authors are then able to show that many families of boundary value problems are Fredholm. The geometric restrictions are flexible. Included are the manifolds with finitely many cylindrical ends or manifolds with periodic ends.