The rotation number for the generalized Kronig-Penney Hamiltonians (Q2463348)

The author describes the band structure of the spectrum of a self-adjoint operator in \(L^2(\mathbb{R})\) with \(2\pi\)-periodic point interactions on a lattice. To be explicit, let \(0<\kappa_1 <\cdots < \kappa_{n+1}=2\pi,\) be a partition of \((0,2\pi)\) and \( \Gamma_j=\{\kappa_j\} +2\pi \mathbb{Z}, j=1,\cdots,n, \Gamma =\Gamma_1 \cup \cdots \cup \Gamma_n.\) The operator \(H\) is defined by \(Hy=-y'' \) on \(\mathbb{R}\setminus\Gamma\) with domain \[ \left \{ y\in H^2(\mathbb{R}\setminus \Gamma):{ y(x+0) \choose y'(x+0)} = e^{i\theta_j}A_j { y(x-0) \choose y'(x-0)},\;\;x\in \Gamma_j , \right \} \] where \(\{\theta_j\}_{j=1}^n \subset \mathbb{R}\) and \(\{A_j\}_{j=1}^n \subset \text{SL}_2(\mathbb{R}).\) The rotation number is defined in terms of the Prüfer transform of a non-trivial solution of \(Hy=\lambda y.\) The main result is a relationship between the band edges of the spectrum of \(H\) and the rotation number.