Analytic spectral flow formula for unitaries and Levinson's theorem

TL;DR

This paper derives an integral spectral flow formula for unitaries, extending to non-closed paths, and applies it to Schrödinger scattering systems to relate bound states to the potential.

Contribution

It introduces a regularised winding number formula for spectral flow of unitaries and applies it to scattering operators to explicitly count bound states.

Findings

Derived an integral formula for spectral flow of unitaries.

Extended the formula to non-closed paths of unitaries.

Applied the formula to Schrödinger scattering systems to count bound states.

Abstract

We prove an integral formula for the spectral flow of differentiable loops of unitaries of the form ${\rm Id}+$Schatten. Our formula is in terms of a regularised winding number, expressed in terms of exact differential forms, and we show how the formula extends to non-closed paths. Applying these ideas to the scattering operator of Schr\"{o}dinger scattering systems yields explicit formulae for the number of bound states, possibly modified by the presence of resonances, of the system in terms of the potential. We finish by briefly considering the paths of unbounded operators obtained from unitary loops via the Cayley transform. These include cases of moving domain as well as paths with non-constant Hilbert space.