On the Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture for certain periodic Maxwell operators (Q626183)

The main theorem proved in the paper states that, if \(\varepsilon\) is a \(C^{2}\)-smooth function defined on \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\) of the form \(\varepsilon(x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3})= \varepsilon_{1}(x_{1})+\varepsilon_{2}(x_{2})\), where \(\varepsilon_{1}\) and \(\varepsilon_{2}\) are positive and 1-periodic functions, then the spectrum of the equation \(-\Delta E = \lambda \varepsilon E\) contains a ray and thus has only finitely many gaps. Moreover, if the functions \(\varepsilon_{1}\) and \(\varepsilon_{2}\) are sufficiently close to constants, then the spectrum of the equation coincides with \([0, \infty)\). As a consequence of this theorem, one obtains that the number of spectral gaps of the periodic Maxwell operator with dielectric function \(\varepsilon\) is finite and that, if the medium is near to being homogeneous, then there are no spectral gaps.