arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Rupert L. Frank.
We give a simplified proof of the nonexistence of large nuclei in the liquid drop model and provide an explicit bound. Our bound is within a factor of 2.3 of the conjectured value and seems to be the first quantitative result.
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the precompactness of all optimizing sequences for the Stein-Tomas inequality. In particular, if a well-known conjecture about the optimal constant in the Strichartz inequality is true, we obtain the existence of an optimizer in the Stein-Tomas inequality. Our result is valid in any dimension.
This paper consists of three parts. In part I, we microscopically derive Ginzburg--Landau (GL) theory from BCS theory for translation-invariant systems in which multiple types of superconductivity may coexist. Our motivation are unconventional superconductors. We allow the ground state of the effective gap operator $K_{T_c}+V$ to be $n$-fold degenerate and the resulting GL theory then couples $n$ order parameters. In part II, we study examples of multi-component GL theories which arise from an isotropic BCS theory. We study the cases of (a) pure $d$-wave order parameters and (b) mixed $(s+d)$-wave order parameters, in two and three dimensions. In part III, we present explicit choices of spherically symmetric interactions $V$ which produce the examples in part II. In fact, we find interactions $V$ which produce ground state sectors of $K_{T_c}+V$ of arbitrary angular momentum, for open sets of of parameter values. This is in stark contrast with Schrödinger operators $-\nabla^2+V$, for which the ground state is always non-degenerate. Along the way, we prove the following fact about Bessel functions: At its first maximum, a half-integer Bessel function is strictly larger than all other half-integer Bessel functions.
We study the eigenvalues of Schrödinger operators with complex potentials in odd space dimensions. We obtain bounds on the total number of eigenvalues in the case where $V$ decays exponentially at infinity.
We consider Schrödinger operators in $\mathbb R^d$ with complex potentials supported on a hyperplane and show that all eigenvalues lie in a disk in the complex plane with radius bounded in terms of the $L^p$ norm of the potential with $d-1<p\leq d$. We also prove bounds on sums of powers of eigenvalues.
We discuss the eigenvalues $E_j$ of Schrödinger operators $-Δ+V$ in $L^2(\mathbb R^d)$ with complex potentials $V\in L^p$, $p<\infty$. We show that (A) $\mathrm{Re} E_j\to\infty$ implies $\mathrm{Im} E_j\to 0$, and (B) $\mathrm{Re} E_j\to E\in [0,\infty)$ implies $(\mathrm{Im} E_j)\in\ell^q$ for some $q$ depending on $p$. We prove quantitative versions of (A) and (B) in terms of the $L^p$-norm of $V$.
We present a summary of our recent rigorous derivation of the celebrated Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory, starting from the microscopic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) model. Close to the critical temperature, GL arises as an effective theory on the macroscopic scale. The relevant scaling limit is semiclassical in nature, and semiclassical analysis, with minimal regularity assumptions, plays an important part in our proof.
We consider convex trace functions $Φ_{p,q,s} = Trace[ (A^{q/2}B^p A^{q/2})^s]$ where $A$ and $B$ are positive $n\times n$ matrices and ask when these functions are convex or concave. We also consider operator convexity/concavity of $A^{q/2}B^p A^{q/2}$ and convexity/concavity of the closely related trace functional $Trace[ A^{q/2}B^p A^{q/2} C^r]$. For concavity, these questions are completely settled, thereby settling cases left open by Hiai, while the convexity questions are settled in many cases. As a consequence, the Audenaert-Datta Rényi entropy conjectures are proved for some cases.
Laptev and Safronov conjectured that any non-positive eigenvalue of a Schrödinger operator $-Δ+V$ in $L^2(\mathbb R^ν)$ with complex potential has absolute value at most a constant times $\|V\|_{γ+ν/2}^{(γ+ν/2)/γ}$ for $0<γ\leqν/2$ in dimension $ν\geq 2$. We prove this conjecture for radial potentials if $0<γ<ν/2$ and we `almost disprove' it for general potentials if $1/2<γ<ν/2$. In addition, we prove various bounds that hold, in particular, for positive eigenvalues.
Fröhlich's polaron Hamiltonian describes an electron coupled to the quantized phonon field of an ionic crystal. We show that in the strong coupling limit the dynamics of the polaron is approximated by an effective non-linear partial differential equation due to Landau and Pekar, in which the phonon field is treated as a classical field.
We prove general uniqueness results for radial solutions of linear and nonlinear equations involving the fractional Laplacian $(-Δ)^s$ with $s \in (0,1)$ for any space dimensions $N \geq 1$. By extending a monotonicity formula found by Cabre and Sire \cite{CaSi-10}, we show that the linear equation $(-Δ)^s u+ Vu = 0$ in $\mathbb{R}^N$ has at most one radial and bounded solution vanishing at infinity, provided that the potential $V$ is a radial and non-decreasing. In particular, this result implies that all radial eigenvalues of the corresponding fractional Schrödinger operator $H=(-Δ)^s + V$ are simple. Furthermore, by combining these findings on linear equations with topological bounds for a related problem on the upper half-space $\mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+$, we show uniqueness and nondegeneracy of ground state solutions for the nonlinear equation $(-Δ)^s Q + Q - |Q|^α Q = 0$ in $\mathbb{R}^N$ for arbitrary space dimensions $N \geq 1$ and all admissible exponents $α>0$. This generalizes the nondegeneracy and uniqueness result for dimension N=1 recently obtained by the first two authors in \cite{FrLe-10} and, in particular, the uniqueness result for solitary waves of the Benjamin--Ono equation found by Amick and Toland \cite{AmTo-91}.
We prove uniqueness of ground state solutions $Q = Q(|x|) \geq 0$ for the nonlinear equation $(-Δ)^s Q + Q - Q^{α+1}= 0$ in $\mathbb{R}$, where $0 < s < 1$ and $0 < α< \frac{4s}{1-2s}$ for $s < 1/2$ and $0 < α< \infty$ for $s \geq 1/2$. Here $(-Δ)^s$ denotes the fractional Laplacian in one dimension. In particular, we generalize (by completely different techniques) the specific uniqueness result obtained by Amick and Toland for $s=1/2$ and $α=1$ in [Acta Math., \textbf{167} (1991), 107--126]. As a technical key result in this paper, we show that the associated linearized operator $L_+ = (-Δ)^s + 1 - (α+1) Q^α$ is nondegenerate; i.\,e., its kernel satisfies $\mathrm{ker}\, L_+ = \mathrm{span}\, \{Q'\}$. This result about $L_+$ proves a spectral assumption, which plays a central role for the stability of solitary waves and blowup analysis for nonlinear dispersive PDEs with fractional Laplacians, such as the generalized Benjamin-Ono (BO) and Benjamin-Bona-Mahony (BBM) water wave equations.
We consider the product of spectral projections $$ Π_ε(λ) = 1_{(-\infty,λ-ε)}(H_0) 1_{(λ+ε,\infty)}(H) 1_{(-\infty,λ-ε)}(H_0) $$ where $H_0$ and $H$ are the free and the perturbed Schrödinger operators with a short range potential, $λ>0$ is fixed and $ε\to0$. We compute the leading term of the asymptotics of $\mathrm{Tr}\ f(Π_ε(λ))$ as $ε\to0$ for continuous functions $f$ vanishing sufficiently fast near zero. Our construction elucidates calculations that appeared earlier in the theory of "Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe" and emphasizes the role of Hankel operators in this phenomenon.
The ancient Gamow liquid drop model of nuclear energies has had a renewed life as an interesting problem in the calculus of variations: Find a set $Ω\subset \mathbb R^3$ with given volume A that minimizes the sum of its surface area and its Coulomb self energy. A ball minimizes the former and maximizes the latter, but the conjecture is that a ball is always a minimizer -- when there is a minimizer. Even the existence of minimizers for this interesting geometric problem has not been shown in general. We prove the existence of the absolute minimizer (over all $A$) of the energy divided by $A$ (the binding energy per particle). A second result of our work is a general method for showing the existence of optimal sets in geometric minimization problems, which we call the `method of the missing mass'. A third point is the extension of the pulling back compactness lemma from $W^{1,p}$ to $BV$.
We consider the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer free energy functional for particles interacting via a two-body potential on a microscopic scale and in the presence of weak external fields varying on a macroscopic scale. We study the influence of the external fields on the critical temperature. We show that in the limit where the ratio between the microscopic and macroscopic scale tends to zero, the next to leading order of the critical temperature is determined by the lowest eigenvalue of the linearization of the Ginzburg-Landau equation.
The last unsolved problem about the many-polaron system, in the Pekar-Tomasevich approximation, is the case of bosons with the electron-electron Coulomb repulsion of strength exactly 1 (the 'neutral case'). We prove that the ground state energy, for large $N$, goes exactly as $-N^{7/5}$, and we give upper and lower bounds on the asymptotic coefficient that agree to within a factor of $2^{2/5}$.
We generalize the theorems of Stein--Tomas and Strichartz about surface restrictions of Fourier transforms to systems of orthonormal functions with an optimal dependence on the number of functions. We deduce the corresponding Strichartz bounds for solutions to Schrödinger equations up to the endpoint, thereby solving an open problem of Frank, Lewin, Lieb and Seiringer. We also prove uniform Sobolev estimates in Schatten spaces, extending the results of Kenig, Ruiz, and Sogge. We finally provide applications of these results to a Limiting Absorption Principle in Schatten spaces, to the well-posedness of the Hartree equation in Schatten spaces, to Lieb--Thirring bounds for eigenvalues of Schrödinger operators with complex potentials, and to Schatten properties of the scattering matrix.
We consider the p-Laplacian in R^d perturbed by a weakly coupled potential. We calculate the asymptotic expansions of the lowest eigenvalue of such an operator in the weak coupling limit separately for p>d and p=d and discuss the connection with Sobolev interpolation inequalities.