Absolutely continuous spectrum for the isotropic Maxwell operator with coefficients that are periodic in some directions and decay in others

The purpose of this paper is to prove that the spectrum of an isotropic Maxwell operator with electric permittivity and magnetic permeability that are periodic along certain directions and tending to a constant super-exponentially fast in the remaining directions is purely absolutely continuous. The basic technical tools is a new ``operatorial'' identity relating the Maxwell operator to a vector-valued Schrodinger operator. The analysis of the spectrum of that operator is then handled using ideas developed by the same authors in a previous paper

Spectral asymptotics of Pauli operators and orthogonal polynomials in complex domains

We consider the spectrum of a two-dimensional Pauli operator with a compactly supported electric potential and a variable magnetic field with a positive mean value. The rate of accumulation of eigenvalues to zero is described in terms of the logarithmic capacity of the support of the electric potential. A connection between these eigenvalues and orthogonal polynomials in complex domains is established.Comment: 16 page