Essential self-adjointness of semibounded elliptic operators of second order (Q5899719)

The author considers linear second order elliptic operators of the form \[ \hat H=\sum_{i,j}(\partial /\partial x_ i)a_{ij}\partial /\partial x_ j+V(x)\quad in\quad L^ 2(R^ n),\quad n\geq 3. \] He gives conditions on the coefficients as x tends to infinity sufficient for essential selfadjointness of the operator provided the same operator with potential \(V(x)=0\) and \(a_{ij}=\delta_{ij}\) for large values of x is selfadjoint in \(C^{\infty}_ 0(R^ n)\). Sufficient conditions for essential selfadjointness in the case \(V\geq 0\) have earlier been given by Yu. A. Semenov. The present paper gives such conditions allowing the potential to have a negative singular part and the operator to be semi-bounded.