Floquet operators without singular continuous spectrum (Q852589)

The authors want to study the spectral properties of the Floquet operator generated by purely absolutely continuous systems on the Euclidean space, periodically perturbed by a non-smooth potential, a compact kick. To this end, they develop the ideas of the Mourre's positive commutator theory to study the spectrum of a unitary operator. The method gives sufficient conditions to control its eigenvalues and to exclude its singular continuous spectrum. The main result of this paper is as follows. Let \(U\) be a unitary operator with spectral family \(E_U(\cdot)\) and \(A\) a selfadjoint operator in a Hilbert space \({\mathcal H}\). Assume that the commutators \(U^*AU -A\) and \([U^*AU, A]\) are densely defined and admit bounded extensions over \({\mathcal H}\). If there exist an open arc \(\exp(i\Theta)\) of the unit circle (with \(\Theta\) being a subset of the torus \({\mathbb T} = {\mathbb R}/2\pi {\mathbb Z} \simeq [\alpha,\alpha+2\pi)\) with \(\alpha\) being any real number), a positive number \(c\) and a compact operator \(K\) such that \[ E_U(\Theta) (U^*AU -A)E_U(\Theta) \geq cE_U(\Theta) +K, \] then \(U\) has a finite number of eigenvalues with finite multiplicity and no singular continuous spectrum in \(\exp(i\Theta)\). In particular, if the point \(\exp(i\theta)\) in \(\exp(i\Theta)\) is not an eigenvalue of \(U\), the operator \((| A| +1)^{-1}\) is \(U\)-smooth at the point \(\theta\), namely, there is an open neighbourhood \(\Theta_{\theta}\) of \(\theta\) such that \((| A| +1)^{-1}E_U(\Theta_{\theta})\) is \(U\)-smooth. Further, if the operator inequality above holds without any compact operator \(K\), \((| A| +1)^{-1}\) is \(U\)-smooth on \(\Theta\) and \(U\) has purely absolutely continuous spectrum in \(\exp(i\Theta)\). Here, a bounded operator \(B\) is said to be \(U\)-smooth if \(\sup_{\| \psi\| =1} \sum_{n \in {\mathbb Z}}\| BU^n \psi \| ^2 < \infty\). Antecedent related results in the case for bounded or semi-bounded \(A\) can be found in [\textit{C.~R.\ Putnam}, ``Commutation properties of Hilbert space operators'' (Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete 36, Springer, Berlin) (1967; Zbl 0149.35104)]. The application to the study of the problem mentioned at the beginning needs the present result, as demonstrated in the paper under review.