Ambarzumyan's theorems for vectorial Sturm-Liouville systems with coupled boundary conditions (Q532956)

The paper presents two uniqueness results concerning the reconstruction of an \(n\times n\) real symmetric potential in the Sturm-Liouville operator from spectral data. The data are associated with (i) a periodic problem; (ii) an anti-periodic problem. The results are of the Ambarzumyan type, in the sense that they guarantee that the potential is trivial (equals zero identically) provided the eigenvalues possess properties of the operator with zero potential. Namely, for the periodic problem, the conditions are as follows: the spectrum contains all square integers, including \(0\), and all other eigenvalues are of multiplicity \(2n\). The proof is actually based on two facts: (i) the mean values of all entries of the potential equal \(0\) (which follows from the fact that the spectrum contains eigenvalues of multiplicity \(2n\) with arbitrarily large magnitude) and (ii) the variational principle, under the assumption that \(0\) is the smallest eigenvalue, implies that there are \(n\) constant, independent eigenfunctions associated with this eigenvalue. Similarly for the anti-periodic problem.