Singular continuous Floquet operator for periodic quantum systems (Q705294)

Let \(H_0\) be a selfadjoint operator in a separable Hilbert space \({\mathcal H}\), bounded from below with pure point spectrum, and let \(\phi\) be a cyclic unit vector for \(H_0\) satisfying some condition. Consider the Floquet operator \(V_{\kappa T} :=e^{-iH_0T}e^{-i\kappa T| \phi\rangle\langle\phi| }\) on \({\mathcal H}\), periodically perturbed from a time-independent quantum system associated with \(H_0\) by a rank one kick, where \(T\) is the period and \(\kappa\) the coupling constant. The paper under review shows: If \(H_0\) has the eigenvalues \((\lambda_n)_{n=1}^{\infty}\) whose gaps satisfy \(\lambda_{n+1}-\lambda_n \geq C n^{-\gamma}\) for some \(0< \gamma <1\) with a constant \(C>0\), then the Floquet operator \(V_{\kappa T}\) is purely singular continuous for a.e. \(T\) and for \(\kappa\) with \(\kappa T \not= 0 (2\pi)\). If \(H_0\) is the Hamiltonian of the one-dimensional rotator on \(L^2({\mathbb R}/T_0 {\mathbb Z})\) with the ratio \(2\pi T/T_0^2\) being irrational, then the Floquet operator is purely singular continuous as soon as \(\kappa T \not= 0\, (2\pi)\). \textit{M. Combescure} [J. Stat. Phys. 59, 679--690 (1990; Zbl 0713.58044)] gave simple criteria which ensure the Floquet operator of the perturbed system to remain ``generically'' pure point, and at the same time conjectured that without this condition the spectrum of this operator may turn singular continuous on imposing some condition upon the gaps of the eigenvalues of the unperturbed operator \(H_0\). The paper under review studies the issue with a slight improvement of Combescure's result.