On the essential self-adjointness of the general second order elliptic operators (Q4226301)

The author studies the essential self-adjointness of operators of the form \[ Lu=- \nabla\bigl(A(x) \nabla u(x)\bigr) +q(x)u(x),\quad \text{where }x\in \mathbb{R}^n,\;n\geq 1. \] Here \(A:\mathbb{R}^n \to\mathbb{R}^n\) is a positive, symmetric matrix and \(q\in L^\infty_{\text{loc}}(\mathbb{R}^n)\). We denote by \(M\) the space \(\mathbb{R}^n\) endowed with the Riemann metric induced by \(x\to A^{-1}(x)\) and by \(\text{dist}_M\) the metric in \(M\). The following assumptions are made: \(M\) is complete, there is a function \(Q>1\) such that \(q(x)\geq-Q(x)\), \(\forall x\in\mathbb{R}^n\), \(\exists K\geq 0\) s.t. \(|Q^{-1/2}(x)-Q^{-1/2}(y) |\leq K \text{dist}_M(x,y)\), \(\int_lQ^{-1/2} (x)dl=\infty\) for any piecewise smooth curve \(l\) going to infinity. Then \(L_0\), the operator \(L\) with domain \({\mathcal C}^\infty_0(M)\), is essentially self-adjoint.