Essential spectra of singular matrix differential operators of mixed order (Q539887)

A mixed order formally self-adjoint \(2\times 2\) system of scalar differential equations \[ T\begin{pmatrix} x\\u \end{pmatrix}=\begin{pmatrix} -Dp(t)D+q_0(t)&-Dh(t)+q_1(t)\\{\bar h}(t)D+{\bar q}_1(t)& d(t) \end{pmatrix}\begin{pmatrix} x\\u \end{pmatrix} \] is considered on an interval \((a,b)\), where \(p\), \(q_0\) and \(d\) are real-valued continuous functions, \(p>0\), and \(h\) and \(q_1\) are complex-valued continuous functions. The authors investigate the essential spectrum of self-adjoint realizations in the weighted Lebesgue space \(L^2_R\), \(R=\text{diag}(r_1,r_2)\) with positive functions \(r_1\) and \(r_2\). Putting \[ \begin{aligned} M(t)&=\dfrac{p(t)d(t)-|h(t)|^2}{p(t)r_2(t)}\,,\quad \Lambda =\text{Cl}\{\text{Range}_{t\in(a,b)}M(t)\},\\ \alpha (t)&=p(t)\left(\lambda r_2(t)-d(t)\right)+|h(t)|^2, \end{aligned} \] it is assumed that there is \(\lambda \in \mathbb{C}\setminus \Lambda \) and a constant \(K(\lambda )>0\) such that \[ \left|\frac{p^2(t)q_1^2(t)}{\alpha ^2(t,\lambda )}\right|r_2(t)\leq K(\lambda )r_1(t), \quad t\in(a,b). \] A singular Hamiltonian differential system \[ JY'=[Q(t,\lambda )+\xi W(t,\lambda )]Y, \quad \xi\in \mathbb C, \;t\in(a,b),\;J=\begin{pmatrix} 0&-1\\1&0\end{pmatrix}, \] is introduced, where \(Q\) and \(W\) are \(2\times 2\) matrices depending on the coefficient of the given system. Finally, the maximal differential operator \(\tau (\lambda )\) is defined by \(\tau (\lambda )Y=f\) where \(JY'-QY=Wf\). The main result states that the essential spectrum of \(T\) is \[ \sigma _e(T)=\Lambda \cup \{\mu\not \in \Lambda : 0\in \sigma _e(\tau (\mu))\}. \] An important feature of this approach to finding the essential spectrum is that \(\sigma _e(\tau (\mu))=\emptyset \) if the Hamiltonian system is in the limit circle case at \(a\) and \(b\). It is shown that this latter property holds if and only if \(T\) is in the limit circle case at \(a\) and \(b\), and, therefore, \(\sigma _e(T)=\emptyset \) in that case. Several examples, old and new, are considered demonstrating that this general result on \(\sigma _e(T)\) provides a short direct way to calculate essential spectra, as compared with previous ad hoc solutions.