Eigenvalues of an elliptic system (Q1395395)

The author deals with spectral properties of the nonselfadjoint, elliptic differential system \[ (Lf)(x)=A(x)f'(x)\quad\text{in }L^{2}((\alpha,\beta),\mathbb{C}^{n}) \] subject to the general boundary condition \(Sf(\alpha)+Tf(\beta)=0\), where \(A:(\alpha,\beta)\owns x\mapsto A(x)\in M_{n}(\mathbb{C})\) is a piecewise constant function and \(S, T\) are constant \(n\times n\)-matrices. Under certain condition, the author proves that the eigenvalues form a discrete set and converge asymptotically to one of several straight lines. More specifically, let \(\alpha=\alpha_{0}<\alpha_{1}<\ldots<\alpha_{m}=\beta\) and let \(A(x)=A_{s}\) for \(\alpha_{s-1}<x\leq\alpha_{s}\), where each \(A_{s}\) is invertible and diagonalizable. The solution to the equation \(Af'=zf\) can be written in the form \(f(x)=U(z,\beta)f(\alpha)\), where \(U(z,\beta)=U_{m}U_{m-1}\ldots U_{1}\) and \(U_{s}=\exp(zA_{s}^{-1}(\alpha_{s}-\alpha_{s-1}))\). So, \(z\) is an eigenvalue of \(L\) if and only if \(z\) is a zero of the analytic function \(F(z):=\det(S+TU(z,\beta))\). The function \(F\) is expressed in the form \(F(z)=\sum^{R}_{r=1}\delta_{r}\exp(z\overline{\gamma_{r}})\). Let \(K\) be the convex hull of the set of \(\gamma_{r}\). After relabelling, the convex hull has vertices \(\gamma_{1},\ldots,\gamma_{Q}\) written in anticlockwise order, while the remainder of the \(\gamma_{r}\) lie in the interior of \(K\); we assume that no \(\gamma_{r}\) lies on an edge of \(K\) unless it is already a vertex of \(K\). The author shows that, in addition to a finite number of zeros near to the origin, \(F(z)\) has \(Q\) series of zeros, each of which converges asymptotically at infinity towards a semi-infinite line perpendicular to the edge \((\gamma_{r_{-}},\gamma_{r})\) of \(K\), where \(r_{-}=r\) for \(2\leq r\leq Q\) and \(r_{-}=Q\) for \(r=1\). The author also shows that the number of zeros of \(F(z)\) such that \(|z|\leq E\), which is denoted by \(N(E)\), admits the asymptotic expansion \(N(E)=b(K)E/2\pi+{\mathcal O}(1)\) as \(E\to\infty\), where \(b(K)\) stands for the length of \(\partial K\). This estimate shows that the leading term of the spectral counting function of \(L\) depends very sensitively on the boundary conditions, in contrast to the case of selfadjoint boundary value problems. The author also discusses basis problems, numerical range problems, semigroup properties, and inverse spectral problems.