An asymptotic formula for the number of eigenvalue branches of a divergence form operator A+λB in a spectral gap of A (Q4385679)

Let \[ A=-\sum_{j,k=1}^{n}\partial _j a_{jk}(x)\partial _k: H^2 (\mathbb{R}^n)\rightarrow L_2 (\mathbb{R}^n) \] be an operator on \(\mathbb{R}^n\) with periodic coefficients \(a=[a_{jk}(x)]_{j,k=1}^n\), and let \[ B=-\sum_{j,k=1}^{n}\partial _j b_{jk}(x)\partial _k: H^2 (\mathbb{R}^n)\rightarrow L_2 (\mathbb{R}^n) \] be an operator with non-negative matrix \([b_{jk}(x)]_{j,k=1}^n\). The authors study spectral properties of the operator \(A+\lambda B\). They assume that \(a\) is a positive periodic matrix-function with bounded derivatives \(\partial _ja\), \(j=1,...,n\) and \(b=b_0fb_0\), where \(b_0\) is a positive matrix-valued function with \(\partial _j b_0\) bounded for \(j=1,...,n\), \(f\) is non-negative matrix-valued function with \(\partial _jf\) bounded for \(j=1,...,n\), such that for some \(m>0\) the limit \(\widetilde f(x)=\lim _{t\rightarrow\infty}t^mf(tx)\) exists uniformly in \(x\in S^{n-1}\), is continuous and \(\widetilde f(x)>0\) for some \(x\in S^{n-1}\), there exists a lattice \(\Gamma\) such that \(a\) and \(b_0\) are \(\Gamma\)-periodic. Let \(N_-(\lambda ,A-E,B) =\sum_{0<\mu <\lambda} \dim\ker (A+\mu B-E)\). The main result of the paper is the following. Let the above given conditions on the matrices \(a\) and \(b\) are fulfilled and let \(f(x)>0\), \(x\in \mathbb{R}^n\), \(\widetilde f(x)>0\) \(\forall x\in S^{n-1}\). Then there exists \(\lim _{\lambda\rightarrow\infty}\lambda ^{-n/m}N_-(\lambda ,A-E,B)\) and the authors give the values of this limit depending on the function \(\widetilde f\) and the periodic realization of \(A\) and \(B\) according to the Floquet theory.