arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Daniel Lenz.
We discuss the application of various concepts from the theory of topological dynamical systems to Delone sets and tilings. We consider in particular, the maximal equicontinuous factor of a Delone dynamical system, the proximality relation and the enveloping semigroup of such systems.
It is well-known that the dynamical spectrum of an ergodic measure dynamical system is related to the diffraction measure of a typical element of the system. This situation includes ergodic subshifts from symbolic dynamics as well as ergodic Delone dynamical systems, both via suitable embeddings. The connection is rather well understood when the spectrum is pure point, where the two spectral notions are essentially equivalent. In general, however, the dynamical spectrum is richer. Here, we consider (uniquely) ergodic systems of finite local complexity and establish the equivalence of the dynamical spectrum with a collection of diffraction spectra of the system and certain factors. This equivalence gives access to the dynamical spectrum via these diffraction spectra. It is particularly useful as the diffraction spectra are often simpler to determine and, in many cases, only very few of them need to be calculated.
We consider diffusion on discrete measure spaces as encoded by Markovian semigroups arising from weighted graphs. We study whether the graph is uniquely determined if the diffusion is given up to order isomorphism. If the graph is recurrent then the complete graph structure and the measure space are determined (up to an overall scaling). As shown by counterexamples this result is optimal. Without the recurrence assumption, the graph still turns out to be determined in the case of normalized diffusion on graphs with standard weights and in the case of arbitrary graphs over spaces in which each point has the same mass. These investigations provide discrete counterparts to studies of diffusion on Euclidean domains and manifolds initiated by Arendt and continued by Arendt/Biegert/ter Elst and Arendt/ter Elst. A crucial step in our considerations shows that order isomorphisms are actually unitary maps (up to a scaling) in our context.
Trees of finite cone type have appeared in various contexts. In particular, they come up as simplified models of regular tessellations of the hyperbolic plane. The spectral theory of the associated Laplacians can thus be seen as induced by geometry. Here we give an introduction focusing on background and then turn to recent results for (random) perturbations of trees of finite cone type and their spectral theory.
We consider weighted graphs with an infinite set of vertices. We show that boundedness of all functions of finite energy can be seen as a notion of `relative compactness' for such graphs and study sufficient and necessary conditions for this property in terms of various metrics. We then equip graphs satisfying this property with a finite measure and investigate the associated Laplacian and its semigroup. In this context, our results include the trace class property for the semigroup, uniqueness and existence of solutions to the Dirichlet problem with boundary arising from the natural compactification, an explicit description of the domain of the Dirichlet Laplacian, convergence of the heat semigroup for large times as well as stochastic incompleteness and transience of the corresponding random walk in continuous time.
We study Schrödinger operators on $\R$ with measures as potentials. Choosing a suitable subset of measures we can work with a dynamical system consisting of measures. We then relate properties of this dynamical system with spectral properties of the associated operators. The constant spectrum in the strictly ergodic case coincides with the union of the zeros of the Lyapunov exponent and the set of non-uniformities of the transfer matrices. This result enables us to prove Cantor spectra of zero Lebesgue measure for a large class of operator families, including many operator families generated by aperiodic subshifts.
We establish several new relations between the discrete transition operator, the continuous Laplacian and the averaging operator associated with combinatorial and metric graphs. It is shown that these operators can be expressed through each other using explicit expressions. In particular, we show that the averaging operator is closely related with the solutions of the associated wave equation. The machinery used allows one to study a class of infinite graphs without assumption on the local finiteness.
We study Laplacians associated to a graph and single out a class of such operators with special regularity properties. In the case of locally finite graphs, this class consists of all selfadjoint, non-negative restrictions of the standard formal Laplacian and we can characterize the Dirichlet and Neumann Laplacians as the largest and smallest Markovian restrictions of the standard formal Laplacian. In the case of general graphs, this class contains the Dirichlet and Neumann Laplacians and we describe how these may differ from each other, characterize when they agree, and study connections to essential selfadjointness and stochastic completeness. Finally, we study basic common features of all Laplacians associated to a graph. In particular, we characterize when the associated semigroup is positivity improving and present some basic estimates on its long term behavior. We also discuss some situations in which the Laplacian associated to a graph is unique and, in this context, characterize its boundedness.
Large time behaviour of heat semigroups (and more generally, of positive selfadjoint semigroups) is studied. Convergence of the semigroup to the ground state and of averaged logarithms of kernels to the ground state energy is shown in the general framework of positivity improving selfadjoint semigroups. This framework includes Laplacians on manifolds, metric graphs and discrete graphs.
We study the connections between volume growth, spectral properties and stochastic completeness of locally finite graphs. For a class of graphs with a very weak spherical symmetry we give a condition which implies both stochastic incompleteness and discreteness of the spectrum. We then use these graphs to give some comparison results for both stochastic completeness and estimates on the bottom of the spectrum for general locally finite graphs.
We consider metric graphs with a uniform lower bound on the edge lengths but no further restrictions. We discuss how to describe every local self-adjoint Laplace operator on such graphs by boundary conditions in the vertices given by projections and self-adjoint operators. We then characterize the lower bounded self-adjoint Laplacians and determine their associated quadratic form in terms of the operator families encoding the boundary conditions.
We consider Delone sets with finite local complexity. We characterize validity of a subadditive ergodic theorem by uniform positivity of certain weights. The latter can be considered to be an averaged version of linear repetitivity. In this context, we show that linear repetitivity is equivalent to positivity of weights combined with a certain balancedness of the shape of return patterns.
We consider the construction and classification of some new mathematical objects, called ergodic spatial stationary processes, on locally compact Abelian groups, which provide a natural and very general setting for studying diffraction and the famous inverse problems associated with it. In particular we can construct complete families of solutions to the inverse problem from any given pure point measure that is chosen to be the diffraction. In this case these processes can be classified by the dual of the group of relators based on the set of Bragg peaks, and this gives a solution to the homometry problem for pure point diffraction. An ergodic spatial stationary process consists of a measure theoretical dynamical system and a mapping linking it with the ambient space in which diffracting density is supposed to exist. After introducing these processes we study their general properties and link pure point diffraction to almost periodicity. Given a pure point measure we show how to construct from it and a given set of phases a corresponding ergodic spatial stationary process. In fact we do this in two separate ways, each of which sheds its own light on the nature of the problem. The first construction can be seen as an elaboration of the Halmos--von Neumann theorem, lifted from the domain of dynamical systems to that of stationary processes. The second is a Gelfand construction obtained by defining a suitable Banach algebra out of the putative eigenfunctions of the desired dynamics.
We consider minimal, aperiodic symbolic subshifts and show how to characterize the combinatorial property of bounded powers by means of a metric property. For this purpose we construct a family of graphs which all approximate the subshift space, and define a metric on each graph which extends to a metric on the subshift space. The characterization of bounded powers is then given by the Lipschitz equivalence of a suitably defined infimum metric with the corresponding supremum metric. We also introduce zeta-functions and relate their abscissa of convergence to various exponents of complexity of the subshift.
In this paper we consider bounded operators on infinite graphs, in particular Cayley graphs of amenable groups. The operators satisfy an equivariance condition which is formulated in terms of a colouring of the vertex set of the underlying graph. In this setting it is natural to expect that the integrated density of states (IDS), or spectral distribution function, exists. We show that it can be defined as the uniform limit of approximants associated to finite matrices. The proof is based on a Banach space valued ergodic theorem which even allows explicit convergence estimates. Our result applies to a variety of group structures and colouring types, in particular to periodic operators and percolation-type Hamiltonians.
We study the spectrum of random operators on a large class of trees. These trees have finitely many cone types and they can be constructed by a substitution rule. The random operators are perturbations of Laplace type operators either by random potentials or by random hopping terms, i.e., perturbations of the off-diagonal elements. We prove stability of arbitrary large parts of the absolutely continuous spectrum for sufficiently small but extensive disorder.
We study Laplacians on graphs and networks via regular Dirichlet forms. We give a sufficient geometric condition for essential selfadjointness and explicitly determine the generators of the associated semigroups on all $\ell^p$, $1\leq p < \infty$, in this case. We characterize stochastic completeness thereby generalizing all earlier corresponding results for graph Laplacians. Finally, we study how stochastic completeness of a subgraph is related to stochastic completeness of the whole graph.
We discuss Laplacians on graphs in a framework of regular Dirichlet forms. We focus on phenomena related to unboundedness of the Laplacians. This includes (failure of) essential selfadjointness, absence of essential spectrum and stochastic incompleteness.