scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2159016

Publication date 19 April 2005

Fredholm operator Lie manifolds polyhedral domain Pseudodifferential operator spectrum of operators

Boundary value problems for second-order elliptic equations (35J25) Degenerate elliptic equations (35J70) Pseudodifferential and Fourier integral operators on manifolds (58J40)

Review text

The author studies pseudodifferential operators on non-compact, but complete Riemannian manifolds. The article specializes to Lie manifolds. Roughly speaking, Lie manifolds are complete manifolds \((M_0,g)\) with a uniform behavior at infinity. Here ``uniform behavior means that \(M_0\) is the interior of a compact manifold with corners \(M\) such that the dual of the metric \(g^b:T^*M_0\otimes T^*M_0\to {\mathbb R}\) extends smoothly to \(M\). The class of Lie manifolds is sufficiently large in order to include many interesting examples such as asymptotically cylindrical manifolds, asymptotically Euclidean manifolds, asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds, and many others. On the other hand, the class is sufficiently small to derive strong conclusions. Formally, Lie manifolds are expressed by specifying a Lie algebra \(V\) of vector fields on \(M\), i.e., a sub-algebra of the Lie algebra of all vector fields. One also assumes that \(V\) is closed under multiplication with functions in \(C^\infty(M)\) and that for small closed balls \(B\subset M_0\) the restriction map \(V\to \Gamma(B)\), \(X\mapsto X| _{B}\) is surjective. Then the interior \(M_0\) of \(M\) is equipped with a geometry such that the vector fields in \(V\) have bounded length. We refer to \textit{B. Ammann, R. Lauter} and \textit{V. Nistor} [Int. J. Math. Math. Sci., No.~1--4, 161--193 (2004; Zbl 1071.53020)] and the article under review for an exact definition. In \textit{B. Ammann, R. Lauter} and \textit{V. Nistor} [`Pseudodifferential operators on manifolds with a Lie structure at infinity', Preprint (2002 (*))] an algebra of pseudodifferential operators was constructed on Lie manifolds. The difficulty in this construction is to show that the constructed vector space of pseudodifferential operators is indeed closed under composition. This problem, known as Melrose's quantization problem was solved by using previous results about pseudo\-differential operators on Lie groupoids. In the article under review, it is discussed when such operators are Fredholm. The main result of the article, Theorem 4.1, shows under some conditions to the Lie manifold that \(P\) is Fredholm, if, and only if, an associated operator defined on the ``enlarged boundary is invertible. This enlarged boundary is the total space of a fiber bundle over \(\partial M\) whose fibers are solvable Lie groups. Another version of this result with more general conditions, but more difficult to verify in practice can be found in [\textit{R. Lauter, B. Monthubert} and \textit{V. Nistor}, Doc. Math., J. DMV 5, 625--655 (2000; Zbl 0961.22005) and \textit{R. Lauter} and \textit{V. Nistor}, Prog. Math. 198, 181--229 (2001; Zbl 1018.58009)]. The article starts with a short introduction into the subject with many references to related articles, the first section explains the applications to boundary value problems. Section~2 recalls preliminary concepts and introduces into Melrose's quantization problem, namely the problem to construct a suitable algebra of pseudodifferential operators on a Lie manifold. This construction is recalled in section~3, see [(*)] for details. The proof of closedness under composition partially relies on ideas from Melrose's b-calculus. However, in contrast to Melrose's b-calculus the kernel of the extended operator does not live on a compact manifold, but on a manifold with ends of the form \(N\times G\) where \(N\) is compact and \(G\) a Lie group. This is where pseudodifferential operators on Lie groups show up naturally. Section~4 proves the above mentioned Fredholm condition. Then, in section~5, several enlightening examples are presented. The last section then derives very concrete applications to the essential spectrum of the Dirac and the Laplace operator on non-compact manifolds. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1057.58001].

Recommendations

Cited in

(18)

This page was built for publication:

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q4668570)