Simplicity and finiteness of discrete spectrum of the Benjamin-Ono scattering operator (Q2798652)

The Lax pair \(L_{u}\) and \(B_{u}\) for the Benjamin-Ono equation NEWLINE\[NEWLINEu_{t} + 2 u u_{x} - H u_{x x} = 0,NEWLINE\]NEWLINE where \(H\) denotes the Hilbert transform NEWLINE\[NEWLINEH \varphi (x) = p. v. \frac{1}{\pi} \int_{- \infty}^{\infty} \frac{\varphi (y)}{x - y} d y,NEWLINE\]NEWLINE is taken into account in order to investigate special spectral properties of \(L_{u}\) need for the Fokas-Ablowitz inverse scatering transform scheme. The operator \(L_{u}\) is represented as NEWLINE\[NEWLINEL_{u} = \frac{1}{i} \partial_{x} - C_{+} u C_{+}NEWLINE\]NEWLINE on \(\mathcal{H}^{+}\), the Hardy space of \(L^{2}\) function whose Fourier transforms are supported on the positive half-line, \(C_{+}\) being the Cauchy projection \(C_{+} = 1/2 (I + i H).\) In fact, \(L_{u}\) is a relatively compact perturbation of \(\frac{1}{i} \partial _{x},\) it is self-adjoint on \(\mathcal{H}^{+}\) with the domain \(\mathcal{H}^{+} \cap \mathcal{H}^{1} (\mathbb{R})\) (\( \mathcal{H}^{1} (\mathbb{R})\) denotes for the \(L^{2}\) Sobolev space) provided that \(u \in L^{2} (\mathbb{R}) \cap L^{\infty} (\mathbb{R}).\) The main result asserts that, under conditions \(u \in L^{1} (\mathbb{R}) \cap L^{\infty} (\mathbb{R})\) and \(x u (x) \in L^{2} (\mathbb{R})\) the operator \(L_{u}\) has only finitely many negative eigenvalues each of which is simple. The proof of the finiteness of the negative spectrum are based on the max-min principle by involving Birman-Schwinger bound for Schrödinger operators.