No Arabic abstract
We study the (massless) Dirac operator on a 3-sphere equipped with Riemannian metric. For the standard metric the spectrum is known. In particular, the eigenvalues closest to zero are the two double eigenvalues +3/2 and -3/2. Our aim is to analyse the behaviour of eigenvalues when the metric is perturbed in an arbitrary smooth fashion from the standard one. We derive explicit perturbation formulae for the two eigenvalues closest to zero, taking account of the second variations. Note that these eigenvalues remain double eigenvalues under perturbations of the metric: they cannot split because of a particular symmetry of the Dirac operator in dimension three (it commutes with the antilinear operator of charge conjugation). Our perturbation formulae show that in the first approximation our two eigenvalues maintain symmetry about zero and are completely determined by the increment of Riemannian volume. Spectral asymmetry is observed only in the second approximation of the perturbation process. As an example we consider a special family of metrics, the so-called generalized Berger spheres, for which the eigenvalues can be evaluated explicitly.
We analyze the spectrum of the massless Dirac operator on the 3-torus $mathbb{T}^3$. It is known that it is possible to calculate this spectrum explicitly, that it is symmetric about zero and that each eigenvalue has even multiplicity. However, for a general oriented closed Riemannian 3-manifold $(M,g)$ there is no reason for the spectrum of the massless Dirac operator to be symmetric. Using perturbation theory, we derive the asymptotic formulae for its eigenvalues and prove that by the perturbation of the Euclidean metric on the 3-torus, it is possible to obtain spectral asymmetry of the massless Dirac operator in the axisymmetric case.
We study the spectrum of a one-dimensional Dirac operator pencil, with a coupling constant in front of the potential considered as the spectral parameter. Motivated by recent investigations of graphene waveguides, we focus on the values of the coupling constant for which the kernel of the Dirac operator contains a square integrable function. In physics literature such a function is called a confined zero mode. Several results on the asymptotic distribution of coupling constants giving rise to zero modes are obtained. In particular, we show that this distribution depends in a subtle way on the sign variation and the presence of gaps in the potential. Surprisingly, it also depends on the arithmetic properties of certain quantities determined by the potential. We further observe that variable sign potentials may produce complex eigenvalues of the operator pencil. Some examples and numerical calculations illustrating these phenomena are presented.
This is a survey of accumulated spectral analysis observations spanning more than a century, referring to the double layer potential integral equation, also known as Neumann-Poincare operator. The very notion of spectral analysis has evolved along this path. Indeed, the quest for solving this specific singular integral equation, originally aimed at elucidating classical potential theory problems, has inspired and shaped the development of theoretical spectral analysis of linear transforms in XX-th century. We briefly touch some marking discoveries into the subject, with ample bibliographical references to both old, sometimes forgotten, texts and new contributions. It is remarkable that applications of the spectral analysis of the Neumann-Poincare operator are still uncovered nowadays, with spectacular impacts on applied science. A few modern ramifications along these lines are depicted in our survey.
Consider a formally self-adjoint first order linear differential operator acting on pairs (2-columns) of complex-valued scalar fields over a 4-manifold without boundary. We examine the geometric content of such an operator and show that it implicitly contains a Lorentzian metric, Pauli matrices, connection coefficients for spinor fields and an electromagnetic covector potential. This observation allows us to give a simple representation of the massive Dirac equation as a system of four scalar equations involving an arbitrary two-by-two matrix operator as above and its adjugate. The point of the paper is that in order to write down the Dirac equation in the physically meaningful 4-dimensional hyperbolic setting one does not need any geometric constructs. All the geometry required is contained in a single analytic object - an abstract formally self-adjoint first order linear differential operator acting on pairs of complex-valued scalar fields.
We address the question whether there is a three-dimensional bounded domain such that the Neumann--Poincare operator defined on its boundary has infinitely many negative eigenvalues. It is proved in this paper that tori have such a property. It is done by decomposing the Neumann--Poincare operator on tori into infinitely many self-adjoint compact operators on a Hilbert space defined on the circle using the toroidal coordinate system and the Fourier basis, and then by proving that the numerical range of infinitely many operators in the decomposition has both positive and negative values.