Symmetric operators with real defect subspaces of the maximal dimension. Applications to differential operators (Q639517)

In this paper, the author is interested in a simple symmetric operator \(A\) with equal deficiency indices \(d:=n_{\pm}(A)<\infty\) in a Hilbert space \(\mathfrak{H}\). In the main result, it is shown that if for all \(\lambda\in I\subset\mathbb{R}\) (\(I\) is an open interval) the dimension of the defect subspace \(\mathfrak{N}_{\lambda}(A)\) coincides with \(d\), then every self-adjoint extension \(\widetilde{A}\supset A\) has no continuous spectrum in \(I\) and the point spectrum of \(\widetilde{A}\) is nowhere dense in \(I\). In the final section, this result is applied to formally self-adjoint differential operators in the form \[ l[y]=\sum_{k=1}^{n}(-1)^k\left(\left(p_{n-k}\, y^{(k)}\right)^{(k)}-\frac{i}{2}\left[\left(q^*_{n-k}\, y^{(k)}\right)^{(k-1)}+\left(q_{n-k}\, y^{(k-1)}\right)^{(k)}\right]\right)+p_n\, y, \] which enables to generalize some recently obtained results (especially by \textit{J. Weidman} in Theorem 11.7 of [Spectral theory of ordinary differential operators. Lecture Notes in Mathematics, 1258. Berlin etc.: Springer-Verlag (1987; Zbl 0647.47052)] and, more recently, by \textit{J. Sun}, \textit{A.-P. Wang} and \textit{A. Zettl} in Theorem~1 of [J. Funct. Anal. 255, No.~11, 3229--3248 (2008; Zbl 1165.34052)]).