Smoothness of solutions for Schrödinger equations with unbounded potentials (Q2386886)

The author studies the Cauchy problem for the time dependent Schrödinger equation \[ (\partial_{t}+\imath H(\cdot))u=0, \quad H(t)=\sum^{d}_{j,k=1}{(\text{D}_{j}-a_{j}(t,x))g^{jk}(x)(\text{D}_{k}-a_{k} (t,x))}+V(t,x). \] The magnetic and the electric potentials are matrix valued and the conditions imposed on potentials and on the coefficients of the equation are roughly the following: there exist \(c_{1}, c_{2}>0\) such that \(c_{1}I_{d} \leq (g^{jk}(x)) \leq c_{2}I_{d}\) for any \(x\), \(| a_{j}(t,x) | = O(| x |)\) and \(| V(t,x) | = O({| x |}^{2}\) when \(| x | \rightarrow \infty\), uniformly on every compact time interval. The well-posedeness of the Cauchy problem in the scale of Sobolev spaces associated with the operator \(1-\Delta+| x|^{2}\) is proved first. In order to obtain results concerning the smoothing effect an additional assumption is made: there exists a function \(f\) which is convex with respect to the Hamilton vector field \(H_{h_{0}}\) generated by the unperturbed scalar principal symbol of \(H(t)\). We do not give here the exact formulation of the theorems of the paper. Essentially one proves that the regularity of the solution increases for \(t\in (0,T]\) at every point which is not trapped backward by the geodesic flow generated by the Hamilton field \(H_{h_{0}}\) if the initial data decays in an incoming region in the phase space. \(T\) can be chosen equal with \(\infty\) if \(| a_{j}(t,x) | = o(| x |)\) and \(| V(t,x) | = o({| x |}^{2})\) when \(| x | \rightarrow \infty\). For the proof, the author uses Weyl calculus techniques to describe the behavior of the Schrödin\-ger operator transforms when it is conjugated with an appropriate invertible pseudo-differential operator. This allows to treat the growing potentials as perturbations.