The spectral shift function for compactly supported perturbations of Schr\"odinger operators on large bounded domains

We study the asymptotic behavior as L \to \infty of the finite-volume spectral shift function for a positive, compactly-supported perturbation of a Schr\"odinger operator in d-dimensional Euclidean space, restricted to a cube of side length L with Dirichlet boundary conditions. The size of the support of the perturbation is fixed and independent of L. We prove that the Ces\`aro mean of finite-volume spectral shift functions remains pointwise bounded along certain sequences L_n \to \infty for Lebesgue-almost every energy. In deriving this result, we give a short proof of the vague convergence of the finite-volume spectral shift functions to the infinite-volume spectral shift function as L \to\infty . Our findings complement earlier results of W. Kirsch [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 101, 509 - 512 (1987), Int. Eqns. Op. Th. 12, 383 - 391 (1989)] who gave examples of positive, compactly-supported perturbations of finite-volume Dirichlet Laplacians for which the pointwise limit of the spectral shift function does not exist for any given positive energy. Our methods also provide a new proof of the Birman--Solomyak formula for the spectral shift function that may be used to express the measure given by the infinite-volume spectral shift function directly in terms of the potential.Comment: Minor changes and some rearrangements; version as publishe

Edge Currents for Quantum Hall Systems, II. Two-Edge, Bounded and Unbounded Geometries

Devices exhibiting the integer quantum Hall effect can be modeled by one-electron Schroedinger operators describing the planar motion of an electron in a perpendicular, constant magnetic field, and under the influence of an electrostatic potential. The electron motion is confined to bounded or unbounded subsets of the plane by confining potential barriers. The edges of the confining potential barriers create edge currents. This is the second of two papers in which we review recent progress and prove explicit lower bounds on the edge currents associated with one- and two-edge geometries. In this paper, we study various unbounded and bounded, two-edge geometries with soft and hard confining potentials. These two-edge geometries describe the electron confined to unbounded regions in the plane, such as a strip, or to bounded regions, such as a finite length cylinder. We prove that the edge currents are stable under various perturbations, provided they are suitably small relative to the magnetic field strength, including perturbations by random potentials. The existence of, and the estimates on, the edge currents are independent of the spectral type of the operator.Comment: 57 page

Smoothness of Correlations in the Anderson Model at Strong Disorder

We study the higher-order correlation functions of covariant families of observables associated with random Schr\"odinger operators on the lattice in the strong disorder regime. We prove that if the distribution of the random variables has a density analytic in a strip about the real axis, then these correlation functions are analytic functions of the energy outside of the planes corresponding to coincident energies. In particular, this implies the analyticity of the density of states, and of the current-current correlation function outside of the diagonal. Consequently, this proves that the current-current correlation function has an analytic density outside of the diagonal at strong disorder