Justification of the lattice equation for a nonlinear elliptic problem with a periodic potential (Q1006307)

The authors rely on properties of the Floquet band-gap spectrum and the Fourier-Bloch decomposition for a linear Schrödinger operator with a periodic potential. Solutions of the nonlinear elliptic problem are represented in terms of Wannier functions and the problem is reduced, using elliptic theory, to a set of nonlinear algebraic equations solvable with the Implicit Function Theorem. Their analysis is developed for a class of classwise-constant periodic potentials with disjoint spectral bands, which reduce, in a singular limit, to a periodic sequence of infinite walls of a nonzero width. The discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation is applied to classify localized solutions of the Gross--Pitaevskii equation with a periodic potential.