Convergence of nodal sets in the adiabatic limit

We study the nodal sets of non-degenerate eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on fibre bundles $\pi{:}\, M\to B$ in the adiabatic limit. This limit consists in considering a family $G_\varepsilon$ of Riemannian metrics, that are close to Riemannian submersions, for which the ratio of the diameter of the fibres to that of the base is given by $\varepsilon \ll 1$. We assume $M$ to be compact and allow for fibres $F$ with boundary, under the condition that the ground state eigenvalue of the Dirichlet-Laplacian on $F_x$ is independent of the base point. We prove for $\mathrm{dim} B \leq 3$ that the nodal set of the Dirichlet-eigenfunction $\varphi$ converges to the pre-image under $\pi$ of the nodal set of a function $\psi$ on $B$ that is determined as the solution to an effective equation. In particular this implies that the nodal set meets the boundary for $\varepsilon$ small enough and shows that many known results on this question, obtained for some types of domains, also hold on a large class of manifolds with boundary. For the special case of a closed manifold $M$ fibred over the circle $B=S^1$ we obtain finer estimates and prove that every connected component of the nodal set of $\varphi$ is smoothly isotopic to the typical fibre of $\pi{:}\, M\to S^1$.Comment: revised version, Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry, 201

A many-body RAGE theorem

We prove a generalized version of the RAGE theorem for N-body quantum systems. The result states that only bound states of systems with $0\leq n\leq N$ particles persist in the long time average. The limit is formulated by means of an appropriate weak topology for many-body systems, which was introduced by the second author in a previous work, and is based on reduced density matrices. This topology is connected to the weak-* topology of states on the algebras of canonical commutation or anti-commutation relations, and we give a formulation of our main result in this setting.Comment: Final version to appear in Comm. Math. Phys.; specifically: Communications in Mathematical Physics, Springer Verlag (Germany), 2015, in pres

The adiabatic limit of the connection Laplacian

We study the behaviour of Laplace-type operators H on a complex vector bundle E $\rightarrow$ M in the adiabatic limit of the base space. This space is a fibre bundle M $\rightarrow$ B with compact fibres and the limit corresponds to blowing up directions perpendicular to the fibres by a factor 1/$\epsilon$. Under a gap condition on the fibre-wise eigenvalues we prove existence of effective operators that provide asymptotics to any order in $\epsilon$ for H (with Dirichlet boundary conditions), on an appropriate almost-invariant subspace of L${}^2$(E).Comment: To appear in the Journal of Geometric Analysi

Effective Hamiltonians for Thin Dirichlet Tubes with Varying Cross-Section

We show how to translate recent results on effective Hamiltonians for quantum systems constrained to a submanifold by a sharply peaked potential to quantum systems on thin Dirichlet tubes. While the structure of the problem and the form of the effective Hamiltonian stays the same, the difficulties in the proofs are different.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Generalised Quantum Waveguides

We study general quantum waveguides and establish explicit effective Hamiltonians for the Laplacian on these spaces. A conventional quantum waveguide is an $\varepsilon$-tubular neighbourhood of a curve in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and the object of interest is the Dirichlet Laplacian on this tube in the asymptotic limit $\varepsilon\to0$. We generalise this by considering fibre bundles $M$ over a $d$-dimensional submanifold $B\subset\mathbb{R}^{d+k}$ with fibres diffeomorphic to $F\subset\mathbb{R}^k$, whose total space is embedded into an $\varepsilon$-neighbourhood of $B$. From this point of view $B$ takes the role of the curve and $F$ that of the disc-shaped cross-section of a conventional quantum waveguide. Our approach allows, among other things, for waveguides whose cross-sections $F$ are deformed along $B$ and also the study of the Laplacian on the boundaries of such waveguides. By applying recent results on the adiabatic limit of Schr\"odinger operators on fibre bundles we show, in particular, that for small energies the dynamics and the spectrum of the Laplacian on $M$ are reflected by the adiabatic approximation associated to the ground state band of the normal Laplacian. We give explicit formulas for the according effective operator on $L^2(B)$ in various scenarios, thereby improving and extending many of the known results on quantum waveguides and quantum layers in $\mathbb{R}^3$

Particle Creation at a Point Source by Means of Interior-Boundary Conditions

We consider a way of defining quantum Hamiltonians involving particle creation and annihilation based on an interior-boundary condition (IBC) on the wave function, where the wave function is the particle-position representation of a vector in Fock space, and the IBC relates (essentially) the values of the wave function at any two configurations that differ only by the creation of a particle. Here we prove, for a model of particle creation at one or more point sources using the Laplace operator as the free Hamiltonian, that a Hamiltonian can indeed be rigorously defined in this way without the need for any ultraviolet regularization, and that it is self-adjoint. We prove further that introducing an ultraviolet cut-off (thus smearing out particles over a positive radius) and applying a certain known renormalization procedure (taking the limit of removing the cut-off while subtracting a constant that tends to infinity) yields, up to addition of a finite constant, the Hamiltonian defined by the IBC.Comment: 41 page