Perturbation theory for spectral gap edges of 2D periodic Schr\"odinger operators

We consider a two-dimensional periodic Schr\"odinger operator $H=-\Delta+W$ with $\Gamma$ being the lattice of periods. We investigate the structure of the edges of open gaps in the spectrum of $H$. We show that under arbitrary small perturbation $V$ periodic with respect to $N\Gamma$ where $N=N(W)$ is some integer, all edges of the gaps in the spectrum of $H+V$ which are perturbation of the gaps of $H$ become non-degenerate, i.e. are attained at finitely many points by one band function only and have non-degenerate quadratic minimum/maximum. We also discuss this problem in the discrete setting and show that changing the lattice of periods may indeed be unavoidable to achieve the non-degeneracy.Comment: 25 pages; several typos are fixed and comments are added; subsection 3.2 is expanded to include more detailed proof of Theorem 3.

The non-Abelian gauge theory of matrix big bangs

We study at the classical and quantum mechanical level the time-dependent Yang-Mills theory that one obtains via the generalisation of discrete light-cone quantisation to singular homogeneous plane waves. The non-Abelian nature of this theory is known to be important for physics near the singularity, at least as far as the number of degrees of freedom is concerned. We will show that the quartic interaction is always subleading as one approaches the singularity and that close enough to t=0 the evolution is driven by the diverging tachyonic mass term. The evolution towards asymptotically flat space-time also reveals some surprising features.Comment: 29 pages, 8 eps figures, v2: minor changes, references added: v3 small typographical changes

Perestroikas of Shocks and Singularities of Minimum Functions

The shock discontinuities, generically present in inviscid solutions of the forced Burgers equation, and their bifurcations happening in the course of time (perestroikas) are classified in two and three dimensions -- the one-dimensional case is well known. This classification is a result of selecting among all the perestroikas occurring for minimum functions depending generically on time, the ones permitted by the convexity of the Hamiltonian of the Burgers dynamics. Topological restrictions on the admissible perestroikas of shocks are obtained. The resulting classification can be extended to the so-called viscosity solutions of a Hamilton--Jacobi equation, provided the Hamiltonian is convex.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables; my e-mail: [email protected]