Strong coupling asymptotics for \(\delta \)-interactions supported by curves with cusps (Q2195191)

The authors consider a simple closed curve \(\Gamma \subset \mathbb{R}^{2}\) which is smooth except at the origin at which it coincides with the curve \(\left\vert x_{2}\right\vert =x_{1}^{p}\), for some \(p>1\), and the Schrödinger operator \(H_{\alpha }\) defined for \(u\in H^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{2})\) as \(H_{\alpha}(u)=\iint\limits_{\mathbb{R}^{2}}\left\vert \nabla u\right\vert^{2}dx-\alpha \int_{\Gamma }u^{2}ds\). The main result of the paper proves that for every \(n\), the eigenvalue \(E_{n}(H_{\alpha })\) is equal to \(-\alpha^{2}+2^{\frac{2}{p+2}}E_{n}(A)\alpha ^{\frac{6}{p+2}}+\mathcal{O}(\alpha ^{\frac{6}{p+2}-\eta })\), as \(\alpha \) tends to \(+\infty \). Here \(E_{n}(A)\) is the \(n\)-th eigenvalue of the auxiliary one-dimensional operator \(A\) acting in \(L^{2}(0,+\infty )\) as \((Af)(x)=-f^{\prime \prime }(x)+x^{p}f(x)\) and \(\eta =\min \{\frac{p-1}{2(p+2)},\frac{2(p-1)}{(p+1)(p+2)}\}\). For the proof, the authors use the min-max principle for the eigenvalues of self-adjoint operators and they reduce the problem to one in a moving half-plane. They indeed introduce \(\Gamma _{\varepsilon }=\{(x_{1},x_{2}):x_{1}\in (0,\varepsilon )\), \(\left\vert x_{2}\right\vert =x_{1}^{p}\}\) and the operator \(H_{\alpha ,\varepsilon }(u)=\iint\limits_{\mathbb{R} ^{2}}\left\vert \nabla u\right\vert ^{2}dx-\alpha \int_{\Gamma _{\varepsilon}}u^{2}ds\). They evaluate the Rayleigh ratio of \(H_{\alpha ,\varepsilon }\) in terms of that of a self-adjoint operator \(F_{h,b}\) and that of \(H_{\alpha}\) in terms of that of \(F_{h,\varepsilon h^{\frac{1}{1-p}}}\) which leads to the introduction of one-dimensional effective operator.