Intertwining operators beyond the Stark Effect

Abstract

The main mathematical manifestation of the Stark effect in quantum mechanics is the shift and the formation of clusters of eigenvalues when a spherical Hamiltonian is perturbed by lower order terms. Understanding this mechanism turned out to be fundamental in the description of the large-time asymptotics of the associated Schr\"odinger groups and can be responsible for the lack of dispersion in Fanelli, Felli, Fontelos and Primo [Comm. Math. Phys., 324(2013), 1033-1067; 337(2015), 1515-1533]. Recently, Miao, Su, and Zheng introduced in [Tran. Amer. Math. Soc., 376(2023), 1739--1797] a family of spectrally projected intertwining operators, reminiscent of the Kato's wave operators, in the case of constant perturbations on the sphere (inverse-square potential), and also proved their boundedness in $L^p$. Our aim is to establish a general framework in which some suitable intertwining operators can be defined also for non constant spherical perturbations in space dimensions 2 and higher. In addition, we investigate the mapping properties between $L^p$-spaces of these operators. In 2D, we prove a complete result, for the Schr\"odinger Hamiltonian with a (fixed) magnetic potential an electric potential, both scaling critical, allowing us to prove dispersive estimates, uniform resolvent estimates, and $L^p$-bounds of Bochner--Riesz means. In higher dimensions, apart from recovering the example of inverse-square potential, we can conjecture a complete result in presence of some symmetries (zonal potentials), and open some interesting spectral problems concerning the asymptotics of eigenfunctions.