Isospectral Mathieu-Hill operators (Q2377396)

Let \(H(a,b)\) be the Hill operator \(-y''+qy\) in \(L^2(-\infty ,\infty )\), where the potential is of the form \[ q(x)=ae^{-i2\pi x}+be^{i2\pi x} \] with complex numbers \(a\) and \(b\). The main result of this paper is that the spectrum of \(H(a,b)\) only depends on the product of \(a\) and \(b\). As an immediate consequence, the author extends the Harrell-Avron-Simon formula on spectral gaps, see ([\textit{E. M. Harrell II}, Contributions to analysis and geometry, Suppl. Am. J. Math., 139--150 (1981; Zbl 0544.34014)] and [\textit{J.{} Avron} and \textit{B.{} Simon}, Commun. Math. Phys. 82, 101--120 (1981; Zbl 0484.35069)]), to the case \(a\neq b\). Using the fact that \(\sigma (H(a,b))\) is the union of \(\sigma (H_t(a,b))\) for \(t\in (-\pi ,\pi ]\), where \(H_t(a,b)\) is the differential operator on \([0,1]\) with boundary conditions \(y(1)=e^{it}y(0)\), \(y'(1)=e^{it}y'(0)\), it is shown that \(ab\) can be recovered from any subsequence of eigenvalues of \(H_t(a,b)\) for any \(t\in (-\pi ,\pi ]\).