Asymptotics of spectral quantities of Zakharov-Shabat operators (Q1784827)

This paper concerns the spectral theory of Zakharov-Shabat operators: \[ L=i\begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & -1 \end{pmatrix}\partial_x + \begin{pmatrix} 0 & \varphi_1 \\ \varphi_2 & 0 \end{pmatrix}, \] applied to functions on an interval with periodic or Dirichlet periodic boundary conditions. Precise asymptotics are given for the sequence of eigenvalues \(\lambda_n\) (as well as other spectral quantities), in terms of sums of decreasing powers of \(n\), with coefficients that can be explicitly determined in terms of integrals of polynomials in \(\varphi_1,\varphi_2\). The asymptotics hold uniformly for \((\varphi_1,\varphi_2)\) in a bounded set of an appropriate Sobolev space. The study is motivated by application to non-linear Schrödinger equations.