Schrödinger operators with empty singularly continuous spectra (Q1973260)

The authors prove the absence of the singularly continuous spectrum for a semibounded selfadjoint operator \(H\) in \(L^2(\mathbb{R}^d)\) which is a perturbation of the Laplacian \(H_0=-\Delta\). The proof is based on the theory of complete scattering systems. Instead of directly studying the system \(\{H,H_0\}\), they transform the problem to that of the system \(\{\varphi(H),\varphi(H_0)\}\) for a real-valued \(C^\infty\) function \(\varphi\) with positive or negative first derivative. It is shown that if \(\varphi\) is an exponential function and if the difference \(D_\lambda= e^{-\lambda H}- e^{-\lambda H_0}\), \(\lambda> 0\), has an integral kernel \(D_\lambda(x, y)\) satisfying \[ \int_{\mathbb{R}^d} dx\int_{\mathbb{R}^d} dy|D_\lambda(x, y)|(1+|y|^2)^\alpha< \infty \] for some \(\alpha>0\), then the singularly continuous spectrum of \(H\) is empty. Applications are given not only to potential perturbations but also to the scattering by (unbounded) obstacles.