Mourre's theory for some unbounded Jacobi matrices (Q2566250)

The paper under review considers the second-order difference operator \(H\), usually called a bilateral Jacobi matrix, in the sequence Hilbert space \(\ell({\mathbb Z})\): \[ (H\psi)_n = a_{n-1}\psi_{n-1} + b_n\psi_n +a_n\psi_{n+1}, \quad \psi =(\psi_n) \in \ell({\mathbb Z}), \] where for \(n \in {\mathbb Z}\), \(b_n \in {\mathbb R}\) and \(a_n :=| n| ^{\alpha}(1+\eta_n)\) with \(0<\alpha <1\) and \(\eta_n \rightarrow 0\) for \(n\rightarrow \infty\). Then this unbounded operator \(H\) becomes essentially selfadjoint on the subspace \(\ell_0({\mathbb Z})\) of the sequences in \(\ell({\mathbb Z})\) with only finitely many non-zero coordinates, because the coefficients \(a_n\) satisfy the Carleman condition. Define an operator \(A\) by \( (A\psi)_n = i(\alpha_{n-1}\psi_{n-1}-\alpha_n\psi_{n+1}), \) with \(\alpha_n := \frac{n}{a_n}\) for \(| n| \geq N_0\) for some positive integer \(N_0\). The main result is: If \(H\) is the above operator such that the discrete derivatives of \(\eta_n\) and \(b_n\) decay fast enough for large \(| n| \), its point spectrum \(\sigma_p(H)\) is finite and its singular continuous spectrum \(\sigma_{sc}(H)\) is empty. A propagation theorem is also given. For the proof, the author applies Mourre's theory with \(A\) as a conjugate operator to \(H\), and notes that Putnam-Kato's method cannot be used because \(A\) is unbounded, although the latter method tends to be more often employed in the literature for unbounded Jacobi matrices. Unfortunately there are several misprints in the paper.