Self-adjoint curl operators (Q1953872)

This paper deals with the study of the exterior derivative as a symmetric unbounded operator on square integrable 1-forms on bounded domains in the three dimensional Euclidean space. In the first part, the authors summarize the properties of self-adjoint extensions through complete Lagrangian subspaces of certain factor spaces. Next, the authors apply these abstract results to trace spaces for 1-forms and the corresponding curl operator. They also discuss the properties of Lagrangian subspaces spawned by the Hodge decomposition of 1-forms on surfaces. In relationship with these properties, there are established concrete boundary conditions for self-adjoint curl operators induced by the complete Lagrangian subspaces. The final sections of this paper deal with the spectral properties of the classes of self-adjoint curls examined before and explore their relationships with curl-curl operators.