Transport exponents of Sturmian Hamiltonians (Q2355442)

The present paper studies discrete Schrödinger operators often used in the theory of one-dimensional quasi-crystals. The authors consider Sturmian potentials and study the so-called transport exponents associated with the potentials. For instance, a transport exponent equal to unity corresponds to ballistic transport, an exponent 0.5 to diffusive transport, and a vanishing exponent to a dynamical localization. In all other cases, one has to do with anomalous transport. In comparison to other works, more general expressions for the frequencies are taken into account. The paper gives also some background on the spectral structure of the energy \(z\) (\(z\) is introduced as parameter defining a transfer matrix) at fixed coupling constants and frequencies relative to periodic approximations. Further, the connection between longest spectral generating bands and the upper transport exponent is described. Under suitable assumptions on the frequency, the authors establish upper and lower bounds for the upper transport exponents. As an application of these bounds, they identify the large coupling asymptotics of the upper transport exponents for frequencies of constant type. They also bound the large coupling asymptotics uniformly from above for a Lebesgue-typical frequency. A particular consequence of these results is that for most frequencies of constant type, transport is faster than for Lebesgue at almost every frequency. The authors also show that their model describes quasi-ballistic transport for all coupling constants, generic frequencies, and suitable phases. (abstract with some additions)