Spectral properties of the massless relativistic harmonic oscillator (Q454892)

Let \(H\) be the self-adjoint realization of \((-d^2/dx^2)^{1/2}+ x^2\) in \(L^2(\mathbb{R})\), defined by the Feynman-Kac semigroup. It is shown that the spectrum of \(H\) is purely discrete. Observing that the Fourier transform of an eigenfunction satisfies Bessel's equation of order \(1/3\) and so is a linear combination of two Airy functions, the authors derive a sharp asymptotic formula for the \(n\)th eigenvalue \(\lambda_n\) and an estimate from below for \(\lambda_2-\lambda_1\). A Taylor expansion of the \(n\)th eigenfunction shows that these functions can be estimated uniformly in \(n\) and, as a consequence, sharp upper and lower bounds for the kernel of the semigroup can be derived. Moreover, convexity/concavity properties of the ground state function are established.