Singularities of the wave trace for the Friedlander model (Q1687967)

The authors investigate the behaviour of the wave trace of the Friedlander operator \[ L = -\partial_x^2 - (1+x)\partial_y^2 \] on the cylinder \([0,\infty) \times (\mathbb{R} / 2\pi\mathbb{Z})\) with Dirichlet boundary conditions. In an earlier preprint [``Singularities of the wave trace near cluster points of the length spectrum'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1101.0099}], the same authors had considered the wave trace \[ Z(t) = \sum_{j=1}^\infty e^{it\sqrt{\lambda_j}} \] of the Dirichlet Laplacian on the unit disk \(D\), where \(\lambda_j>0\) are the eigenvalues and \(Z\) is to be understood as a tempered distribution. On the disk, the value \(2\pi = |\partial D|\) is an accumulation point of the length spectrum of \(D\), i.e., the set of singularities of \(Z\). Nevertheless, the authors showed that \(\mathrm{Re}\, Z\) is actually bounded and \(C^\infty\) in a right neighbourhood of \(2\pi\). In the current paper, the authors prove a corresponding statement for the wave trace associated with the discrete part of the spectrum of the Friedlander operator \(L\), as a simpler and more transparent case than that of the Laplacian on the disk, which may also help to point the way to a proof for more general convex domains.