On the asymptotic behavior of solutions to a class of grand canonical master equations

In this article, we investigate the long-time behavior of solutions to a class of infinitely many master equations defined from transition rates that are suitable for the description of a quantum system approaching thermodynamical equilibrium with a heat bath at fixed temperature and a reservoir consisting of one species of particles characterized by a fixed chemical potential.We do so by proving a result which pertains to the spectral resolution of the semigroup generated by the equations, whose infinitesimal generator is realized as a trace-class self-adjoint operator defined in a suitably weighted sequence space. This allows us to prove the existence of global solutions which all stabilize toward the grand canonical equilibrium probability distribution as the time variable becomes large, some of them doing so exponentially rapidly but not all. When we set the chemical potential equal to zero, the stability statements continue to hold in the sense that all solutions converge toward the Gibbs probability distribution of the canonical ensemble which characterizes the equilibrium of the given system with a heat bath at fixed temperature

Remarks on the Convergence of Pseudospectra

We establish the convergence of pseudospectra in Hausdorff distance for closed operators acting in different Hilbert spaces and converging in the generalised norm resolvent sense. As an assumption, we exclude the case that the limiting operator has constant resolvent norm on an open set. We extend the class of operators for which it is known that the latter cannot happen by showing that if the resolvent norm is constant on an open set, then this constant is the global minimum. We present a number of examples exhibiting various resolvent norm behaviours and illustrating the applicability of this characterisation compared to known results

The essential numerical range for unbounded linear operators

We introduce the concept of essential numerical range for unbounded Hilbert space operators T and study its fundamental properties including possible equivalent characterizations and perturbation results. Many of the properties known for the bounded case do not carry over to the unbounded case, and new interesting phenomena arise which we illustrate by some striking examples. A key feature of the essential numerical range is that it captures spectral pollution in a unified and minimal way when approximating T by projection methods or domain truncation methods for PDEs

Counterexample to the Laptev–Safronov conjecture

Laptev and Safronov (Commun Math Phys 292(1):29–54, 2009) conjectured an inequality between the magnitude of eigenvalues of a non-self-adjoint Schrödinger operator on Rd, d≥ 2 , and an Lq norm of the potential, for any q∈ [d/ 2 , d]. Frank (Bull Lond Math Soc 43(4):745–750, 2011) proved that the conjecture is true for q∈ [d/ 2 , (d+ 1) / 2]. We construct a counterexample that disproves the conjecture in the remaining range q∈ ((d+ 1) / 2 , d]. As a corollary of our main result we show that, for any q> (d+ 1) / 2 , there is a complex potential in Lq∩ L∞ such that the discrete eigenvalues of the corresponding Schrödinger operator accumulate at every point in [0 , ∞). In some sense, our counterexample is the Schrödinger operator analogue of the ubiquitous Knapp example in Harmonic Analysis. We also show that it is adaptable to a larger class of Schrödinger type (pseudodifferential) operators, and we prove corresponding sharp upper bounds.</p

Remarks on the Convergence of Pseudospectra

We establish the convergence of pseudospectra in Hausdorff distance for closed operators acting in different Hilbert spaces and converging in the generalised norm resolvent sense. As an assumption, we exclude the case that the limiting operator has constant resolvent norm on an open set. We extend the class of operators for which it is known that the latter cannot happen by showing that if the resolvent norm is constant on an open set, then this constant is the global minimum. We present a number of examples exhibiting various resolvent norm behaviours and illustrating the applicability of this characterisation compared to known results