Two-body scattering for Schrödinger operators involving zero-range interactions (Q762433)

Asymptotic completeness of the wave operators associated with the pair \((H,H_ 0)\), \(H_ 0=-\Delta\) in \(L^ 2({\mathbb{R}}^ n)\), \(n\in {\mathbb{N}}\), the absence of the singular continuous spectrum of H, and the fact that zero is the only accumulation point of the point spectrum of H is proven for the following systems: H is a self-adjoint extension in \(L^ 2({\mathbb{R}}^ n)\) of \(\dot H=(-\Delta +V)|_{C_ 0^{\infty}({\mathbb{R}}^ n\setminus N)}\) where N is a compact subset of \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\) of Lebesgue measure zero and \(V\in L^ 2_{loc}({\mathbb{R}}^ n\setminus N)\) is a real-valued short-range potential. Physically these systems correspond to \(-\Delta +V+\) ''contact interactions'' where the contact interaction is supported on N. The case \(N=\{x_ j\in {\mathbb{R}}^ n| 1\leq j\leq M\}\), i.e., point interactions concentrated at the contact points \(x_ j\), \(1\leq j\leq M\) is particularly discussed. Additional results are obtained in the special case where \(N=\{0\}\) and V is spherically symmetric. The exactly solvable example \(V(x)=(4\alpha^ 2-(n-2)^ 2)/4| x|^ 2\), \(x\in {\mathbb{R}}^ n\setminus \{0\}\), \(n\geq 2\), \(0<\alpha <1\) is analysed in detail. In particular the spectral (bound states resp. resonances) - and scattering properties (phase shifts) are explicitly obtained. The connection between energy forms (i.e. local Dirichlet forms) and contact interactions is pointed out.