No Arabic abstract
One of the many problems to which J.S. Dowker devoted his attention is the effect of a conical singularity in the base manifold on the behavior of the quantum fields. In particular, he studied the small-$t$ asymptotic expansion of the heat-kernel trace on a cone and its effects on physical quantities, as the Casimir energy. In this article we review some peculiar results found in the last decade, regarding the appearance of non-standard powers of $t$, and even negative integer powers of $log{t}$, in this asymptotic expansion for the selfadjoint extensions of some symmetric operators with singular coefficients. Similarly, we show that the $zeta$-function associated to these selfadjoint extensions presents an unusual analytic structure.
The asymptotic expansion of the heat-kernel for small values of its argument has been studied in many different cases and has been applied to 1-loop calculations in Quantum Field Theory. In this thesis we consider this asymptotic behavior for certain singular differential operators which can be related to quantum fields on manifolds with conical singularities. Our main result is that, due to the existence of this singularity and of infinitely many boundary conditions of physical relevance related to the admissible behavior of the fields on the singular point, the heat-kernel has an unusual asymptotic expansion. We describe examples where the heat-kernel admits an asymptotic expansion in powers of its argument whose exponents depend on external parameters. As far as we know, this kind of asymptotics had not been found and therefore its physical consequences are still unexplored.
We consider the resolvent of a system of first order differential operators with a regular singularity, admitting a family of self-adjoint extensions. We find that the asymptotic expansion for the resolvent in the general case presents powers of $lambda$ which depend on the singularity, and can take even irrational values. The consequences for the pole structure of the corresponding $zeta$ and $eta$-functions are also discussed.
We consider some compact non-selfadjoint perturbations of fibered one-dimensional discrete Schrodinger operators. We show that the perturbed operator exhibits finite discrete spectrum under suitable- regularity conditions.
We consider the resolvent of a second order differential operator with a regular singularity, admitting a family of self-adjoint extensions. We find that the asymptotic expansion for the resolvent in the general case presents unusual powers of $lambda$ which depend on the singularity. The consequences for the pole structure of the $zeta$-function, and the small-$t$ asymptotic expansion of the heat-kernel, are also discussed.
Let $H_0$ be a purely absolutely continuous selfadjoint operator acting on some separable infinite-dimensional Hilbert space and $V$ be a compact non-selfadjoint perturbation. We relate the regularity properties of $V$ to various spectral properties of the perturbed operator $H_0+V$. The structure of the discrete spectrum and the embedded eigenvalues are analysed jointly with the existence of limiting absorption principles in a unified framework. Our results are based on a suitable combination of complex scaling techniques, resonance theory and positive commutators methods. Various results scattered throughout the literature are recovered and extended. For illustrative purposes, the case of the one-dimensional discrete Laplacian is emphasized.