On the distribution of scattering poles for perturbations of the Laplacian (Q811583)

We consider selfadjoint positively definite operators of the form \(- \Delta+P\) (not necessarily elliptic) in \(\mathbb{R}^ n\), \(n\geq 3\), odd, where \(P\) is a second-order differential operator with coefficients of compact supports. We show that the number of the scattering poles outside a conic neighbourhood of the real axis admits the same estimates as in the elliptic case. More precisely, if \(\{\lambda_ j\}(\text{Im }\lambda_ j\geq 0_ )\) are the scattering poles associated to the operator \(-\Delta+P\) repeated according to multiplicity, it is proved that for any \(\varepsilon>0\) there exists a constant \(C_ \varepsilon>0\) so that \(\#\{\lambda_ j:|\lambda_ j|\leq r\), \(\varepsilon\leq\arg\lambda_ j\leq\pi-\varepsilon\}\leq C_ \varepsilon r^ n\) for any \(r\geq 1\).