Domains for Dirac-Coulomb min-max levels (Q2313567)

The authors start with showing self-adjointness of Dirac operators with Coulomb potentials both in a classic way going back to \textit{G. Nenciu} [Commun. Math. Phys. 48, 235--247 (1976; Zbl 0349.47014)] and by a more recent variational method of \textit{M. J. Esteban} and \textit{M. Loss} [J. Math. Phys. 48, No. 11, 112107, 8 p. (2007; Zbl 1152.81423)]. Their main result is the variational characterization of the eigenvalues in the gap. While there were several previous partial results, a solution up to the critical constant was only offered by \textit{S. Morozov} and \textit{D. Müller} [Math. Z. 280, No. 3--4, 733--747 (2015; Zbl 1320.49032)] and \textit{D. Müller} [Doc. Math. 21, 1151--1169 (2016; Zbl 1350.49074)]. The important new contribution of the authors concerns the allowed test functions in the variational principle. They show that it suffices to use functions which are easy to characterize, like smooth functions of compact support, as opposed to the two previously mentioned references of Morozov and Müller who require a characterization of the domain.