Determining spectra in quantum theory. (Q2567896)

The spectrum of the Hamiltonian and the expectation values of a few operators are the major invariants of quantum mechanical systems. Spectral theory has seen major advances in the last twenty years. Thus there is a correspondingly large number of new books out on this topic and the contents of these works depend largely on the research interest of the authors. This book is no exception and here essentially the two topics, lattice Hamiltonians and scattering theory, are treated. Many other important areas in quantum mechanics are not covered at all. Three quarters of the book are devoted to the mathematical prerequisites. But the reader is expected to have mastered functional analysis, complex variables and probability theory to considerable depth already before setting sail with this book. Chapter 1 is devoted to measure theory and here the key results of the Simon school of the last 20 years on the Borel transform etc. are presented. A general useful tool for this is the so called wavelet transform. In the second chapter the essentials of the spectral theorem are covered. But the authors only treat the bare minimum and many things are only touched upon, while other important topics, e.g. the multiplication version, extension theory, compact or unitary operators, multiplicity,\dots are not covered at all. In chapter 3.1 rank 1 and 2 additive perturbations are covered in considerable depth, though its relation to extensions remains hidden. An important aspect in quantum mechanics is the relationship between properties of eigenfunctions and properties of spectral concentration. The RAGE Theorem and the quoted Theorem by Christ, Last and Kiselev is but one aspect of this and more results would have been useful and illuminating. The remainder of chapter 3 is devoted to Mourre's commutator method and the more classical aspects of scattering theory leading to rather strong results on trace class conditions. Much of quantum mechanical computations is based on perturbation theory. So the unperturbed operators \(H_0\), on which most of the theory is built upon, are introduced in section 4.1. For \(H_0\) functions of \(-\Delta\) and the discrete Laplacian are considered. This section is written rather tersely and the standard reader will have to consult quite a bit of the literature cited in the notes. This holds e.g. for Dirichlet forms and various types of stochastic processes. In the second part the authors consider additive perturbations by potentials, random potentials and singular perturbations. The latter type models obstacles and is connected with changes in the domain. The treatment of random perturbations is extremely sketchy despite the beautiful result of Pastur et al. The other types of perturbations get the full treatment of form sums, Dirichlet forms, semigroups and associated processes, very tersely, however. The last quarter of the book is devoted to applications. Of this more than three quarters studies random lattice Hamiltonians, more precisely a result of Kotani, the localization in the Anderson model and the Jaksić-Last Theorem. It is astonishing how little of the previously developed theory is actually needed here, essentially only the results on the Borel transform. The methods of scattering theory are applied to decaying random potentials and the obstacle and additive potential problem. Thus this part continues nicely what had been developed in section 4. Each chapter in this book is followed by a ``Notes'' section in which the sources and further results are listed. The ``Notes'' are complemented by an extensive list of references, altogether a valuable addition. Personally I liked the sections on the use of wavelets, the Borel transform as well as the scattering part with applications best. However, from a book even if it is only devoted to recent results mainly one expects that it unifies methods and approaches, points out underlying concepts and thus leads to further questions and problems. This in particular for a book that addresses primarily the researchers. Of all this little is realized in this text. It is not even clear, why the particular models in the applications section were chosen. This book is ``no easy take the reader by the hand'' approach, which proceeds with simple examples, heuristics and general ideas to the forefront of research. It is rather written in a condensed telegraphic Lemma, Theorem, proof style with little room for concepts, motivation examples or ideas. Its major aim seems to be rather to unify the representation of a number of new results in spectral theory, which are scattered throughout the literature. Thus in many instances the reader will have to resort to the original sources.