Spectral theory for discrete Laplacians (Q1958651)

The natural graph Laplacian is considered on the infinite graph whose vertices form an \(N\)-fold branching tree. For \(N\geq 2\) it is shown that the Laplacian is unitarily equivalent to the multiplication operator \(M_{c+p}\oplus\bigoplus_{n=1}^\infty M_c\) on \(L^2(\mu_{c+p})\oplus\bigoplus_{n=1}^\infty L^2(\mu_c)\) where \(M_{c+p}\) and \(M_c\) are the operators of multiplication by \(N+1-2\sqrt{N}x\) on \(L^2(\mu_{c+p})\) and \(L^2(\mu_c)\) respectively where \[ \begin{aligned} d\mu_c &= \frac{2}{\pi} \sqrt{1-x^2}\, dx,\\ d\mu_{c+p} &= \frac{d\mu_c(x)}{1+2\sqrt{N}x+N^{-1}}, \end{aligned} \] on \([-1,1]\).