Propagation of singularities and growth for Schrödinger operators (Q1974918)

The time-dependent Schrödinger equation \((D_t+(1/2)\triangle +V)\psi =0\) (\(D_t\equiv -i(\partial /\partial t)\)) is the nonrelativistic quantum-mechanical description of the motion of a particle in a potential \(V\). Here \(V\) can be a real multiplication operator or the sum of a multiplication operator and a first-order, selfadjoint differential operator, \(\triangle \) is the nonnegative Laplace-Beltrami operator with respect to a Riemannian metric. The interpretation of the considered equation consists in that \(|\psi (t,z)|^2\) is the probability density of observing the particle at the point \(z\) at time \(t\). The propagation of singularities for this equation is investigated. The author studies an interesting case when the Schrödinger equation is defined on a compact manifold with boundary endowed with a ``scattering metric'', that is, a generalization of asymptotically Euclidean metrics on \(\mathbb{R}^n\), radially compactified to the unit ball. The main statement is that under a non-trapping hypothesis on the geodesics the microlocal smoothness of \(\psi (t,\cdot)\) is determined by growth properties of \(\psi \) at \(t=0\) as measured by the ``quadratic-scattering'' wavefront set, a generalization of Hörmander's wavefront set. Also the author proves a propagation theorem for the quadratic-scattering wavefront set describing singularities and growth of \(\psi (t,\cdot)\) in terms of singularities and growth of \(\psi \) at \(t=0\).