The spectral density of the scattering matrix for high energies (Q694971)

This paper deals with the scattering matrix \(S(\lambda)\) associated with the scattering of a \(d\)-dimensio-nal quantum particle on an external short range potential \(V\) at the energy \(\lambda > 0\). Under a suitable condition on the potential \(V\), \(S(\lambda)-I\) is compact and hence the eigenvalues of \(S(\lambda)\) can be expressed as exp\((i\theta_n(\lambda) )\), where \(\theta_n(\lambda)\) is a sequence in \([-\pi,\pi ) \) convergent to \(0\). In this paper, the distribution of \(\{\theta_n(\lambda)\}\) is studied when \(\lambda \to \infty\). The main result is, as recorded by the authors, that after an appropriate scaling the asymptotic density of scattering phases \(\{\theta_n(\lambda)\}\) can be described by a simple explicit formula involving the X-ray transform of the potential, which has appeared in the inverse problem literature.