Schrödinger operators on lattices. The Efimov effect and discrete spectrum asymptotics (Q1882647)

One of the most remarkable results in quantum theory is the Efimov effect. It states that a three body system with short range interactions will have an infinite number of bound states if all two body subsystems have no negative bound states but zero resonance energy. This effect has been studied extensively so far. The analysis of the continuum model is simpler than the corresponding lattice model, because in the former the energy of the center of mass can be separated out from the total Hamiltonian. For the lattice model with zero-range attractive two particle forces this is no longer possible, but the translation invariance allows to represent the operators involved as a direct integral over the dual group \([-\pi, \pi]^3 = \mathbb{T}^3\) of \(\mathbb{Z}^3\). While the Efimov effect holds or does not hold for all values of the total momentum in the continuous case, this will not be true any more for the fibre Hamiltonians \({\mathcal{H}} (K)\), \(K\in \mathbb{T}^3\). In fact the authors show: (1) \(\mathcal{H} (0)\) has infinitely many bound states below, but accumulating at the bottom of the essential spectrum. More precisely one has for the number of eigenvalues \(N(K,z)\) the limit result \[ \lim_{z\to 0} \frac{N(0,z)}{| \log | z| | } = U_0, \qquad 0<U_0 <\infty. \] (2) For all \(K\in \{ K\in\mathbb{T}^3 | 0<| K| <\delta \}\) with \(\delta\) sufficiently small, the three particle operator has only finitely many bound states below the bottom of the essential spectrum, with \[ \lim_{| K| \to 0} \frac{N(K,0)}{|\log | K| | } = 2 U_0. \] (3) In addition the authors obtain lower bounds for the location of the discrete spectrum \({\mathcal{H}} (K)\) in terms of the interaction potentials. A key role in the analysis is played, as expected, by the two particle operators and their Fredholm determinant. These are used to analyze the so called ``channel operators''.