Spectral asymptotics of periodic elliptic operators (Q1961433)

The authors examine the decomposition theory for a second-order elliptic operator \(H\) with periodic coefficients on a complex Hilbert space \(L_2(\mathbb{R}^d)\). The semigroup \(S\) generated by \(H\) decomposes as the direct integral of semigroups \(S^z\), \(z\in\Pi^d\), generated by the versions \(H_z\) of \(H\) acting on \(L_2(I^d)\), where \(I^d= \mathbb{R}^d/ \mathbb{Z}^d\), with \(z\)-periodic boundary conditions (Theorem 2.3). If the semigroup \(S\) generated by \(H\) has an integral kernel with the usual continuity and boundedness properties then the \(S^z\) have kernels with similar properties and \(z\mapsto S^z\) extends to a function on \(\mathbb{C}^d \setminus \{0\}\) which is analytic with respect to the trace norm (Theorem 2.4). The asymptotic behavior of the spectrum of the operator \(H\) is analyzed by a scaling technique.