Spectral asymptotics for waveguides with perturbed periodic twisting (Q290731)

Summary: We consider the twisted waveguide \(\Omega_\theta\), i.e. the domain obtained by the rotation of the bounded cross section \(\omega\subset\mathbb{R}^2\) of the straight tube \(\Omega:=\omega\times\mathbb{R}\) at angle \(\theta\) which depends on the variable along the axis of \(\Omega\). We study the spectral properties of the Dirichlet Laplacian in \(\Omega_\theta\), unitarily equivalent under the diffeomorphism \(\Omega_\theta\to\Omega\) to the operator \(H_{\theta'}\), self-adjoint in \(\mathrm{L}^2(\Omega)\). We assume that \(\theta'=\beta-\epsilon\) where \(\beta\) is a \(2\pi\)-periodic function, and \(\epsilon\) decays at infinity. Then in the spectrum \(\sigma(H_\beta)\) of the unperturbed operator \(H_\beta\) there is a semi-bounded gap \((-\infty,\mathcal{E}_0^+)\), and, possibly, a number of bounded open gaps \((\mathcal{E}_j^-,\mathcal{E}_j^+)\). Since \(\epsilon\) decays at infinity, the essential spectra of \(H_\beta\) and \(H_{\beta-\epsilon}\) coincide. We investigate the asymptotic behaviour of the discrete spectrum of \(H_{\beta-\epsilon}\) near an arbitrary fixed spectral edge \(\mathcal{E}_j^\pm\). We establish necessary and quite close sufficient conditions which guarantee the finiteness of \(\sigma_{\mathrm{disc}}(H_{\beta-\epsilon})\) in a neighbourhood of \(\mathcal{E}_j^\pm\). In the case where the necessary conditions are violated, we obtain the main asymptotic term of the corresponding eigenvalue counting function. The effective Hamiltonian which governs the the asymptotics of \(\sigma_{\mathrm{disc}}(H_{\beta-\epsilon})\) near \(\mathcal{E}_j^\pm\) could be represented as a finite orthogonal sum of operators of the form \[ -\mu\frac{d^2}{dx^2}-\eta\epsilon, \] self-adjoint in \(\mathrm{L}^2(\mathbb{R})\); here, \(\mu>0\) is a constant related to the so-called effective mass, while \(\eta\) is \(2\pi\)-periodic function depending on \(\beta\) and \(\omega\).