arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jake Fillman.
In this short note, we prove positivity of the Lyapunov exponent for 1D continuum Anderson models by leveraging some classical tools from inverse spectral theory. The argument is much simpler than the existing proof due to Damanik--Sims--Stolz, and it covers a wider variety of random models. Along the way we note that a Large Deviation Theorem holds uniformly on compacts.
We construct multidimensional almost-periodic Schrödinger operators whose spectrum has zero lower box counting dimension. In particular, the spectrum in these cases is a generalized Cantor set of zero Lebesgue measure.
We study discrete Schrödinger operators on the graphs corresponding to the triangular lattice, the hexagonal lattice, and the square lattice with next-nearest neighbor interactions. For each of these lattice geometries, we analyze the behavior of small periodic potentials. In particular, we provide sharp bounds on the number of gaps that may perturbatively open, we describe sharp arithmetic criteria on the periods that ensure that no gaps open, and we characterize those energies at which gaps may open in the perturbative regime. In all three cases, we provide examples that open the maximal number of gaps and estimate the scaling behavior of the gap lengths as the coupling constant goes to zero.
We survey results concerning the spectral properties of limit-periodic operators. The main focus is on discrete one-dimensional Schrödinger operators, but other classes of operators, such as Jacobi and CMV matrices, continuum Schrödinger operators and multi-dimensional Schrödinger operators, are discussed as well. We explain that each basic spectral type occurs, and it does so for a dense set of limit-periodic potentials. The spectrum has a strong tendency to be a Cantor set, but there are also cases where the spectrum has no gaps at all. The possible regularity properties of the integrated density of states range from extremely irregular to extremely regular. Additionally, we present background about periodic Schrödinger operators and almost-periodic sequences. In many cases we outline the proofs of the results we present.
We show that there exist limit-periodic Schrödinger operators such that the associated integrated density of states is Lipschitz continuous. These operators arise in the inverse spectral theoretic KAM approach of Pöschel.
We establish concrete criteria for fully supported absolutely continuous spectrum for ergodic CMV matrices and purely absolutely continuous spectrum for limit-periodic CMV matrices. We proceed by proving several variational estimates on the measure of the spectrum and the vanishing set of the Lyapunov exponent for CMV matrices, which represent CMV analogues of results obtained for Schrödinger operators due to Y.\ Last in the early 1990s. Having done so, we combine those estimates with results from inverse spectral theory to obtain purely absolutely continuous spectrum.
We provide a complete and self-contained proof of spectral and dynamical localization for the one-dimensional Anderson model, starting from the positivity of the Lyapunov exponent provided by Fürstenberg's theorem. That is, a Schrödinger operator in $\ell^2(\mathbb{Z})$ whose potential is given by independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables almost surely has pure point spectrum with exponentially decaying eigenfunctions and its unitary group exhibits exponential off-diagonal decay, uniformly in time. This is achieved by way of a new result: for the Anderson model, one typically has Lyapunov behavior for all generalized eigenfunctions. We also explain how to obtain analogous statements for extended CMV matrices whose Verblunsky coefficients are i.i.d., as well as for half-line analogs of these models.
In this expository note, we discuss spatially inhomogeneous quantum walks in one dimension and describe a genre of mathematical methods that enables one to translate information about the time-independent eigenvalue equation for the unitary generator into dynamical estimates for the corresponding quantum walk. To illustrate the general methods, we show how to apply them to a 1D coined quantum walk whose coins are distributed according to an element of the Thue--Morse subshift.
We study continuum Schrödinger operators on the real line whose potentials are comprised of two compactly supported square-integrable functions concatenated according to an element of the Fibonacci substitution subshift over two letters. We show that the Hausdorff dimension of the spectrum tends to one in the small-coupling and high-energy regimes, regardless of the shape of the potential pieces.
We study Jacobi matrices that are uniformly approximated by periodic operators. We show that if the rate of approximation is sufficiently rapid, then the associated quantum dynamics are ballistic in a rather strong sense; namely, the (normalized) Heisenberg evolution of the position operator converges strongly to a self-adjoint operator that is injective on the space of absolutely summable sequences. In particular, this means that all transport exponents corresponding to well-localized initial states are equal to one. Our result may be applied to a class of quantum many-body problems. Specifically, we establish a lower bound on the Lieb--Robinson velocity for an isotropic XY spin chain on the integers with limit-periodic couplings.
We show that the spectrum of a discrete two-dimensional periodic Schrödinger operator on a square lattice with a sufficiently small potential is an interval, provided the period is odd in at least one dimension. In general, we show that the spectrum may consist of at most two intervals and that a gap may only open at energy zero. This sharpens several results of Krüger and may be thought of as a discrete version of the Bethe--Sommerfeld conjecture. We also describe an application to the study of two-dimensional almost-periodic operators.
We provide an elementary proof of the equivalence of various notions of uniform hyperbolicity for a class of $\mathrm{GL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ cocycles and establish a Johnson-type theorem for extended CMV matrices, relating the spectrum to the points on the unit circle for which the associated Szegő cocycle is not uniformly hyperbolic.
The Gordon Lemma refers to a class of results in spectral theory which prove that strong local repetitions in the structure of an operator preclude the existence of eigenvalues for said operator. We expand on recent work of Ong and prove versions of the Gordon Lemma which are valid for CMV matrices and which do not restrict the parity of scales upon which repetitions occur. The key ingredient in our approach is a formula of Damanik-Fillman-Lukic-Yessen which relates two classes of transfer matrices for a given CMV operator. There are many examples to which our result can be applied. We apply our theorem to complete the classification of the spectral type of CMV matrices with Sturmian Verblunsky coefficients; we prove that such CMV matrices have purely singular continuous spectrum supported on a Cantor set of zero Lebesgue measure for all (irrational) frequencies and all phases. We also discuss applications to CMV matrices with Verblunsky coefficients generated by general codings of rotations.
We prove an averaging formula for the derivative of the absolutely continuous part of the density of states measure for an ergodic family of CMV matrices. As a consequence, we show that the spectral type of such a family is almost surely purely absolutely continuous if and only if the density of states is absolutely continuous and the Lyapunov exponent vanishes almost everywhere with respect to the same. Both of these results are CMV operator analogues of theorems obtained by Kotani for Schrödinger operators.
We show that a generic element of a space of limit-periodic CMV operators has zero-measure Cantor spectrum. We also prove a Craig--Simon type theorem for the density of states measure associated with a stochastic family of CMV matrices and use our construction from the first part to prove that the Craig--Simon result is optimal in general. We discuss applications of these results to a quantum walk model where the coins are arranged according to a limit-periodic sequence. The key ingredient in these results is a new formula which may be viewed as a relationship between the density of states measure of a CMV matrix and its Schur function.
We study the dynamics given by the iteration of a (half-line) CMV matrix with sparse, high barriers. Using an approach of Tcheremchantsev, we are able to explicitly compute the transport exponents for this model in terms of the given parameters. In light of the connection between CMV matrices and quantum walks on the half-line due to Cantero-Grünbaum-Moral-Velázquez, our result also allows us to compute transport exponents corresponding to a quantum walk which is sparsely populated with strong reflectors. To the best of our knowledge, this provides the first rigorous example of a quantum walk which exhibits quantum intermittency, i.e., nonconstancy of the transport exponents. When combined with the CMV version of the Jitomirskaya-Last theory of subordinacy and the general discrete-time dynamical bounds from Damanik-Fillman-Vance, we are able to exactly compute the Hausdorff dimension of the associated spectral measure.
We discuss spreading estimates for dynamical systems given by the iteration of an extended CMV matrix. Using a connection due to Cantero--Grünbaum--Moral--Velázquez, this enables us to study spreading rates for quantum walks in one spatial dimension. We prove several general results which establish quantitative upper and lower bounds on the spreading of a quantum walk in terms of estimates on a pair of associated matrix cocycles. To demonstrate the power and utility of these methods, we apply them to several concrete cases of interest. In the case where the coins are distributed according to an element of the Fibonacci subshift, we are able to rather completely describe the dynamics in a particular asymptotic regime. As a pleasant consequence, this supplies the first concrete example of a quantum walk with anomalous transport, to the best of our knowldege. We also prove ballistic transport for a quantum walk whose coins are periodically distributed.
We consider Schrödinger operators on the real line with limit-periodic potentials and show that, generically, the spectrum is a Cantor set of zero Lebesgue measure and all spectral measures are purely singular continuous. Moreover, we show that for a dense set of limit-periodic potentials, the spectrum of the associated Schrödinger operator has Hausdorff dimension zero. In both results one can introduce a coupling constant $λ\in (0,\infty)$, and the respective statement then holds simultaneously for all values of the coupling constant.