Singular quadratic forms: Regularization by restriction (Q677477)

Let \(\gamma\) be a symmetric sesquilinear form which is densely defined in a separable complex Hilbert space \({\mathcal H}\). The form \(\gamma\) is said to be singular if for any \(\varphi\in Q(\gamma)\), the domain of \(\gamma\), there exists a sequence of elements \(\varphi_n\in Q(\gamma)\) such that \(\varphi_n\to \varphi\) in \({\mathcal H}\) and \(\gamma[\varphi_n]\to 0\) as \(n\to\infty\). In such a case \(\gamma\) is nowhere closeable in \({\mathcal H}\). The set of singular vectors \(S(\gamma)\) of \(\gamma\) is defined as follows: \(\varphi\in S(\gamma)\) if there exist at least two different sequences of elements \(\varphi_n\), \(\varphi_n'\in Q(\gamma)\) such that, as \(m, n\to\infty\), \[ \begin{aligned} \varphi_n &\to \varphi,\quad \gamma[\varphi_m- \varphi_n]\to 0,\quad \gamma[\varphi_n]\to 0,\\ \varphi_n' &\to \varphi,\quad \gamma[\varphi_m'- \varphi_n']\to 0,\quad \gamma[\varphi_n']\to a\neq 0.\end{aligned} \] The form \(\gamma\) is singular if and only if \(S(\gamma)\) is dense in \({\mathcal H}\), and regular (that is, closeable) if and only if \(S(\gamma)= \phi\). In between these extremes, it is known that every symmetric form \(\gamma\) which is bounded below can be decomposed into regular and singular components. The main result proved in this paper is that if \(S(\gamma)\neq\emptyset\), then under some natural conditions, the restriction of \(\gamma\) to some dense subset of \({\mathcal H}\) is regular. The technique developed is a constructive one. An application is to singular perturbations of self-adjoint operators: specifically, if \(\gamma_A\) is the form associated with a self-adjoint operator \(A\) and \(\gamma\) a singular form, the form sum \(\widetilde\gamma= \gamma_A+\gamma\) is generally not closeable, but one would like to modify \(\widetilde\gamma\) to give rise to a self-adjoint operator \(\widetilde A\) which can be associated with \(A\) and \(\gamma\). A typical example is a Schrödinger operator with point interaction, \(-\nabla+ \lambda\delta(y)\).