Spectral gaps for periodic Schrödinger operators with hypersurface magnetic wells: analysis near the bottom (Q1040571)

Let \(M\) be a noncompact oriented manifold of dimension \(n\geq 2\) equipped with a properly discontinuous action of a finitely generated, discrete group \(\Gamma\) such that \(M/\Gamma\) is compact. Suppose that \(H^1(M,{\mathbb R}) = 0\), i.e., any closed 1-form on \(M\) is exact. Let \(g\) be a \(\Gamma\)-invariant Riemannian metric and \(\mathbf B\) (magnetic field) a real-valued \(\Gamma\)-invariant closed 2-form on \(M\). Assume that \(\mathbf B\) is exact and choose a real-valued 1-form \(\mathbf A\) (magnetic potential) on \(M\) such that \(d{\mathbf A} = {\mathbf B}\). Let \(H^h=(ihd+{\mathbf A})^*(ihd+{\mathbf A})\) be a magnetic Schrödinger operator, depending on the semiclassical parameter \(h>0\). For any \(x\in M\), denote by \(B(x)\) the anti-symmetric linear operator on the tangent space \(T_x M\) associated with the 2-form \(\mathbf B\): \(g_x(B(x)u,v)={\mathbf B}_x(u,v), u,v\in T_x M\). Denote the trace-norm \(\left[ \text{Tr}\left( B^*(x)\cdot B(x) \right) \right]^{1/2}\) by \(|B(x)|\) (intensity of the magnetic field). The authors assume that the magnetic field has a periodic set of compact magnetic wells and intensity of this field vanishes regularly on a smooth oriented hypersurface \(S\) behaving like \(\text{dist}(x,S)^k, k>0\) in a neighbourhood. Upper and lower estimates for the bottom \(\lambda _{0}(H^h)\) of the spectrum of the operator \(H^h\) in \(L^{2}(M)\) are obtained. Assuming the existence of non-degenerate miniwells for the reduced spectral problem on \(S\), the authors prove the existence of an arbitrarily large number of spectral gaps for the operator \(H^h\) in the region close to \(\lambda _{0}(H^h)\), as \(h\rightarrow 0\). Moreover, upper estimates for the eigenvalues of the one-well problem are obtained.