On the unitary equivalence of absolutely continuous parts of self-adjoint extensions

The classical Weyl-von Neumann theorem states that for any self-adjoint operator $A$ in a separable Hilbert space $\mathfrak H$ there exists a (non-unique) Hilbert-Schmidt operator $C = C^*$ such that the perturbed operator $A+C$ has purely point spectrum. We are interesting whether this result remains valid for non-additive perturbations by considering self-adjoint extensions of a given densely defined symmetric operator $A$ in $\mathfrak H$ and fixing an extension $A_0 = A_0^*$. We show that for a wide class of symmetric operators the absolutely continuous parts of extensions $\widetilde A = {\widetilde A}^*$ and $A_0$ are unitarily equivalent provided that their resolvent difference is a compact operator. Namely, we show that this is true whenever the Weyl function $M(\cdot)$ of a pair $\{A,A_0\}$ admits bounded limits M(t) := \wlim_{y\to+0}M(t+iy) for a.e. $t \in \mathbb{R}$. This result is applied to direct sums of symmetric operators and Sturm-Liouville operators with operator potentials

Scattering Theory for Open Quantum Systems

Quantum systems which interact with their environment are often modeled by maximal dissipative operators or so-called Pseudo-Hamiltonians. In this paper the scattering theory for such open systems is considered. First it is assumed that a single maximal dissipative operator $A_D$ in a Hilbert space \sH is used to describe an open quantum system. In this case the minimal self-adjoint dilation $\widetilde K$ of $A_D$ can be regarded as the Hamiltonian of a closed system which contains the open system \{A_D,\sH\}, but since $\widetilde K$ is necessarily not semibounded from below, this model is difficult to interpret from a physical point of view. In the second part of the paper an open quantum system is modeled with a family $\{A(\mu)\}$ of maximal dissipative operators depending on energy $\mu$, and it is shown that the open system can be embedded into a closed system where the Hamiltonian is semibounded. Surprisingly it turns out that the corresponding scattering matrix can be completely recovered from scattering matrices of single Pseudo-Hamiltonians as in the first part of the paper. The general results are applied to a class of Sturm-Liouville operators arising in dissipative and quantum transmitting Schr\"{o}dinger-Poisson systems