On a family of differential operators with the coupling parameter in the boundary condition (Q2381600)

The authors study a family \((L_\alpha)_{\alpha\geq 0}\) of differential operators, defined below, where the differential expression does not depend on \(\alpha\), but the boundary condition depends on \(\alpha\). They observe a `phase transition' at \(\alpha= 1\): For \(\alpha\leq 1\) the deficiency indices of \(L_\alpha\) are zero and hence \(L_\alpha\) is essentially selfadjoint. Moreover, for \(0<\alpha\leq 1\), the discrete spectrum consists of exactly one nondegenerate eigenvalue. For \(\alpha> 1\), the deficiency indices equal 2 and every selfadjoint extension \(\widehat L_\alpha\) of \(L_\alpha\) has infinitely many negative eigenvalues accumulating at \(-\infty\). For all \(\alpha\), the absolutely continuous part of every selfadjoint extension of \(L_\alpha\) is unitarily equivalent to the one of \(L_\alpha\) and the essential spectrum equals \([0,\infty)\). Here \(L_\alpha\) is the differential operator on \(\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{S}^1\) with \(L_\alpha U= -\Delta U\) and boundary conditions \[ \begin{aligned} U(0+,y)&= U(0-,y),\\ U_x'(0+,y)- U_x'(0, y)&= i\alpha(U_y'(0, y)\cos y+ U(0, y)\cos y)_y'). \end{aligned} \] The authors show that for \(\alpha> 1\) the eigenfunctions of \(L^*_\alpha\) for non-real eigenvalues do not satisfy the Shapiro-Lopatinsky ellipticity conditions and point out that this is important in order to understand the striking difference between the behaviour for \(\alpha> 1\) versus \(\alpha\leq 1\). In addition, they study another family \((M_\alpha)_{\alpha\geq 0}\) of differential operators with the same differential expression but with \(\mathbb{S}^1\) replaced by \((0,\pi)\) and slightly different boundary conditions and achieve similar results.