Uniform positivity and continuity of Lyapunov exponents for a class of \(C^2\) quasiperiodic Schrödinger cocycles (Q2344313)

The paper is devoted to uniform positivity of the Lyapunov exponent \(L(E,\lambda)\) of quasiperiodic Schrödinger operators \[ (Hu)_n := u_{n+1} + u_{n-1} + \lambda v(x+n\alpha) u_n \] in \(\ell^2(\mathbb{Z})\), where the potential \(v\) is of class \(C^2\), the frequency \(\alpha\) is a Diophantine number and \(E\in\mathbb{R}\) is the energy. More precisely, they show that \[ L(E,\lambda)>(1-\varepsilon)\log \lambda \] for all energies and sufficiently large coupling \(\lambda\) depending on the parameter \(\varepsilon>0\). Moreover, the authors also prove weak Hölder continuity for the Lyapunov exponent. By Thouless formula, one thus also obtains weak Hölder continuity of the integrated density of states. The proof relies on techniques from dynamical systems exploiting the asymptotic stable and unstable directions. They use polar decomposition of the Schrödinger cocycles and prove an induction scheme yielding positivity of the Lyapunov exponent. As a consequence, they derive a large deviation result which implies the continuity statements.