Derivatives of (modified) Fredholm determinants and stability of standing and traveling waves (Q936625)

The paper continues investigations initiated in [\textit{F.\,Gesztesy, Yu.\,Latushkin} and \textit{K.\,A.\thinspace Makarov}, Arch.\ Ration.\ Mech.\ Anal.\ 186, No.\,3, 361--421 (2007; Zbl 1134.34004)] exploring the connections between Jost and Evans functions and (modified) Fredholm determinants of Birman--Schwinger type integral operators. The authors examine the stability index, or sign of the first nonvanishing derivative at frequency zero of the characteristic determinant, an object that has found considerable use in the study by Evans function techniques of stability of standing and traveling wave solutions of partial differential equations in one dimension. This leads to the derivation of general perturbation expansions for analytically-varying modified Fredholm determinants of abstract operators. A second main result is to show that the multi-dimensional characteristic Fredholm determinant is the renormalized limit of a sequence of Evans functions defined in [\textit{G.\,J.\thinspace Lord, D.\,Peterhof, B.\,Sandstede} and \textit{A.\,Scheel}, SIAM J.~Numer.\ Anal.\ 37, No.\,5, 1420--1454 (2000; Zbl 0956.65108)].