Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture for periodic Schroedinger operators in strip

TL;DR

This paper proves the Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture for a periodic Schrödinger operator in a strip, showing conditions under which the spectrum has finitely many gaps or none at all.

Contribution

It establishes the conjecture for the Dirichlet Laplacian in a strip with explicit conditions on the period and width ratio, including the case of small periods.

Findings

Spectrum has finitely many gaps if the period-to-width ratio exceeds approximately 0.10121.

Explicit bounds are provided for the absence of internal gaps in the spectrum.

The paper identifies a threshold spectrum point above which no internal gaps exist.

Abstract

We consider the Dirichlet Laplacian in a straight planar strip perturbed by a bounded periodic symmetric operator. We prove the classical Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture for this operator, namely, that this operator has finitely many gaps in its spectrum provided a certain special function written as a series satisfies some lower bound. We show that this is indeed the case if the ratio of the period and the width of strip is less than a certain explicit number, which is approximately equal to 0.10121. We also find explicitly the point in the spectrum, above which there is no internal gaps. We then study the case of a sufficiently small period and we prove that in such case the considered operator has no internal gaps in the spectrum. The conditions ensuring the absence are written as certain explicit inequalities.