On confining potentials and essential self-adjointness for Schr\"odinger operators on bounded domains in R^n

Let $\Omega$ be a bounded domain in $R^n$ with $C^2$-smooth boundary of co-dimension 1, and let $H=-\Delta +V(x)$ be a Schr\"odinger operator on $\Omega$ with potential V locally bounded. We seek the weakest conditions we can find on the rate of growth of the potential V close to the boundary which guarantee essential self-adjointness of H on $C_0^\infty(\Omega)$. As a special case of an abstract condition, we add optimal logarithmic type corrections to the known condition $V(x)\geq \frac{3}{4d(x)^2}$, where $d(x)=dist(x,\partial\Omega)$. The constant 1 in front of each logarithmic term in Theorem 2 is optimal. The proof is based on a refined Agmon exponential estimate combined with a well known multidimensional Hardy inequality

Optimally localized Wannier functions for quasi one-dimensional nonperiodic insulators

It is proved that for general, not necessarily periodic quasi one dimensional systems, the band position operator corresponding to an isolated part of the energy spectrum has discrete spectrum and its eigenfunctions have the same spatial localization as the corresponding spectral projection. As a consequence, an eigenbasis of the band position operator provides a basis of optimally localized (generalized) Wannier functions for quasi one dimensional systems, thus proving the "strong conjecture" of Marzari and Vanderbilt. If the system has some translation symmetries (e.g. usual translations, screw transformations), they are "inherited" by the Wannier basis.Comment: 15 pages, final version. Accepted for publication in J.Phys.

On essential self-adjointness for magnetic Schroedinger and Pauli operators on the unit disc in R^2

We study the question of magnetic confinement of quantum particles on the unit disk \ID in \IR^2, i.e. we wish to achieve confinement solely by means of the growth of the magnetic field $B(\vec x)$ near the boundary of the disk. In the spinless case we show that $B(\vec x)\ge \frac{\sqrt 3}{2}\cdot\frac{1}{(1-r)^2}-\frac{1}{\sqrt 3}\frac{1}{(1-r)^2\ln \frac{1}{1-r}}$, for $|\vec x|$ close to 1, insures the confinement provided we assume that the non-radially symmetric part of the magnetic field is not very singular near the boundary. Both constants $\frac{\sqrt 3}{2}$ and $-\frac{1}{\sqrt 3}$ are optimal. This answers, in this context, an open question from Y. Colin de Verdi\`ere and F. Truc. We also derive growth conditions for radially symmetric magnetic fields which lead to confinement of spin 1/2 particles.Comment: 18 pages; the main theorem has been expanded and generalize

Lax pairs for the Ablowitz-Ladik system via orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle

Nenciu and Simon found that the analogue of the Toda system in the context of orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle is the defocusing Ablowitz-Ladik system. In this paper we use the CMV and extended CMV matrices, respectively, to construct Lax pair representations for this system in the periodic, finite, and infinite cases.Comment: 38 page