A ground state alternative for singular Schrödinger operators (Q813935)

Quadratic forms \({\mathbf a}\) associated with a Schroedinger operator \(L=-\nabla \cdot(A\nabla)+V\) on a domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{d}\) are studied. The principal part of the operator, \(\nabla \cdot(A\nabla)\) is supposed to be uniformly elliptic on every compact subset of \(\Omega\), \(V\) is in \(L^{p}_{\text{loc}}(\mathbb{R}^{d})\) for some \(p>d/2\) and \({\mathbf a}\) is assumed to be positive semidefinite on \(C^{\infty}_{0}(\Omega; \mathbb{R})\). The following dichotomy is proved: either there is a positive function \(W\in C(\Omega)\) such that \(\int_{\Omega}{W | u | ^{2} \,dx} \leq {\mathbf a}[u]\), \(\forall u \in C^{\infty}_{0}(\Omega; \mathbb{R})\), or there is a sequence \((\varphi_{k})_{k} \in C^{\infty}_{0}(\Omega; \mathbb{R})\) and a function \(\varphi \in L^{2}_{\text{loc}}(\Omega)\), called a null function, such that \({\mathbf a}[\varphi_{k}]\rightarrow 0\) and \(\varphi_{k}\rightarrow \varphi\) in \(L^{2}_{\text{loc}}(\Omega)\). If \({\mathbf a}\) has a null function, then there exists a positive function \(W\in C(\Omega)\) such that for every \(\psi \in C^{\infty}_{0}(\Omega; \mathbb{R})\) which is not orthogonal to \(\varphi\) there exists a positive constant \(C\) such that a Poincaré type inequality holds: \(C^{-1}\int_{\Omega}{W | u | ^{2} \,dx} \leq {\mathbf a}[u] + C | \int_{\Omega}{\psi u\,dx} | ^{2}\), \(\forall u \in C^{\infty}_{0}(\Omega; \mathbb{R})\). The relations with the notions of subcritical and critical operators \(L\) in a domain \(\Omega\) are emphasized. More precisely, the following results are proved: 1) The first condition from the dichotomy holds if and only if the operator \(L\) is subcritical in \(\Omega\); 2) If \(L\) is critical in \(\Omega\) and \(\varphi\) is a null function, then it can be locally uniformly approximated in \(\Omega \setminus\{ 0\}\) with functions from \(H^{1}(\Omega)\); 3) Critical positive weights \(W\) (i. e. functions \(W\) such that \(L-W\) is critical in \(\Omega\)) for a subcritical operator \(L\) are found.