Tosio Kato's work on non-relativistic quantum mechanics. I (Q1743801)

Simon gives a concise and entertaining to read review of an aspect of Kato's work, namely operator theory and its applications to -- mostly -- non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The first section gives a historical background, mentions Kato's broader work and explains the restriction to the above mentioned part of his oeuvre: the present first part of this review is focussed on perturbation theory (sections two to six) and self-adjointness (sections seven to ten). \par The sections on perturbation theory (Section 2 to 6) contain a treatment of regular perturbation theory of discrete spectrum as well as the situation when continues spectrum develops when the perturbation is turned on. This can happen for resonances in quantum theory. These sections finish with a review of the Temple and Temple-Kato bound on eigenvalues. \par The sections on self-adjointness begin with a review of Kato's famous proof of self-adjointness of many particle Schrödinger operators. In particular it contains the Kato-Rellich criterion for self-adjointness as an important tool. Section 8 focusses on certain time-dependent aspects. Of course, self-adjointness can be used to show the existence of solutions to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. This, however, can be turned around is also discussed: Chernoff shows that existence of the time-dependent equation yields self-ajointness results. Together with results of Schmincke this gives optimal results on the essential self-adjointness of Dirac operators. Section 9 contains another famous inequality of Kato, namely \[ -\Delta |u| \leq -\Re [\mathrm{sgn}(u) (\nabla-\mathbf{a})^2u] \] and its consequences, e.g., the diamagnetic inequaltiy. The tenth and final section of this first part treats the pertubation of quadratic forms. While for non-relativistic Hamiltonians with Coulomb interactions this might seem to be unnecessary, it is of importance for relativistic Coulomb systems. For Part II, see [the author, Bull. Math. Sci. 9, No. 1, Article ID 1950005, 105 p. (2019; Zbl 1472.81094)].