# Landscape theory for tight-binding Hamiltonians

Shiwen Zhang

U Minnesota

## Time:

Friday, November 15, 2019 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm

## Location:

rh 340p

In 2012, Filoche and Mayboroda introduced the concept of the landscape function u, for an elliptic operator L, which solves the inhomogeneous equation Lu=1. This landscape function has remarkable power to predict the shape and location of localized low energy eigenfunction. These ideas led to beautiful results in mathematics, as well as theoretical and experimental physics. In this talk, we first briefly review these results of landscape theory for differential operators on R^d. We will then discuss some recent progress of extending landscape theory to tight-binding Hamiltonians on discrete lattice Z^d. In particular, we show that the effective potential 1/u creates barrier for appropriate exponential decay eigenfunctions of Agmon type for some discrete Schrodinger operators. We also show that the minimum of 1/u leads to a new counting function, which gives non-asymptotic estimates on the integrated density of states of the Schrodinger operators. This talk contains joint work in progress with S. Mayboroda and some numerical experiments with W. Wang.

# The Christ-Kiselev's multi-linear operator technique and its applications to Schrodinger operators

Wencai Liu

Texas A&M

## Time:

Thursday, November 14, 2019 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

## Location:

RH 340P

We established an axiomatic version of Christ-Kiselev's multi-linear operator techniques.
As applications,  several spectral results of perturbed periodic Schrodinger operators are obtained, including WKB solutions, sharp transitions of preservation of absolutely continuous spectra, criteria of absence of singular spectra and sharp bounds of Hausdorff dimensions of singular spectra.

# Ergodic Schrodinger operators in the infinite-measure setting

Jake Fillman

## Institution:

Texas State University

## Time:

Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

## Location:

RH 340P

We develop the basic spectral theory of ergodic Schrodinger operators when the underlying dynamics are given by a conservative
ergodic transformation of a \sigma-finite measure space. Some fundamental results, such as the Ishii--Pastur theorem carry over to the
infinite-measure setting. We also discuss some examples in which straightforward analogs of results from the probability-measure case do not hold. We will discuss some examples and some interesting open problems.

The talk is based on a joint work with M. Boshernitzan, D. Damanik, and M. Lukic.

# On a universal limit conjecture for the nodal count statistics of quantum graphs

Lior Alon

Technion

## Time:

Thursday, October 17, 2019 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

## Location:

RH 340 P

Understanding the statistical properties of Laplacian eigenfunctions in general and their nodal sets in particular, have an important role in the field of spectral geometry, and interest both mathematicians and physicists. A quantum graph is a system of a metric graph with a self-adjoint Schrodinger operator. It was proven for quantum graphs that the number of points on
which each eigenfunction vanish (also known as the nodal count) is
bounded away from the spectral position of the eigenvalue by the first Betti number of the graph. A remarkable result by Berkolaiko and Weyand showed that the nodal surplus is equal to a magnetic stability index of the corresponding eigenvalue. A similar result for discrete graphs holds as well proved first by Berkoliako and later by Colin deVerdiere.

Both from the nodal count point of view and the magnetic point of view, it is interesting to consider the distribution of these indices over the spectrum. In our work, we show that such a density exists and defines a nodal count distribution. Moreover, this distribution is symmetric, which allows deducing the topology of a graph from its nodal count. Although for general graphs we can not a priori calculate the nodal count distribution, we proved that a certain family of graphs will have a binomial distribution. As a corollary, given any sequence of graphs from that family with an increasing number of cycles, the sequence of nodal count distributions, properly normalized, will converge to a normal distribution.
A numerical study indicates that this property might be universal and led us to state the following conjecture. For every sequence of graphs with an increasing number of cycles, the corresponding sequence of properly normalized nodal count distributions will converge to a normal distribution.
In my talk, I will present our latest results extending the number
of families of graphs for which we can prove the conjecture.

This talk is based on joint works with Ram Band (Technion) and Gregory Berkolaiko (Texas A&M)

# Embedded Eigenvalues for multilayer quantum Graph Graphene

Lee Fisher

LSU

## Time:

Friday, September 13, 2019 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

## Location:

RH 306

By judiciously constructing local defects in graph models of multi-layer graphene, bound states can be constructed at energies that lie within the continuous spectrum of the associated Schrödinger operator. The layers may be stacked in AA or AB fashion. A necessary condition for this construction is the reducibility of the Fermi surface for the multi-layer structure. This is achieved due to a special reduction of the complex dispersion relation to a function of a single polynomial "composite" function of the quasimomenta.
This is joint work with Wei Li and Stephen Shipman at LSU.

# Nonstationary low-dimensional dynamics

Victor Kleptsyn

IRM de Rennes

## Time:

Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

## Location:

RH 340 P

We consider discrete Schr\"odinger operators on $\ell^2(\mathbb{Z})$ with bounded random but not necessarily identically distributed values of the potential. The distribution at a given site is not assumed to be absolutely continuous (or to contain an absolutely continuous component). We prove spectral localization (with exponentially decaying eigenfunctions) as well as dynamical localization for this model.

An important ingredient of the proof is a non-stationary analog of the Furstenberg Theorem on random matrix products,
which is also of independent interest.

This is a joint project with A.Gorodetski.

# Quantitative almost reducibility of quasiperiodic cocycles

Lingrui Ge

## Institution:

Nanjing University

## Time:

Thursday, August 29, 2019 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

## Location:

RH 306

Abstract: In this talk, I will give a brief introduction to several popular topics in the spectral theory of quasi-periodic Schrodinger operators. I will then talk about several sharp results we get recently on these topics (especially for almost Mathieu operator). Our results are based on quantitative almost reducibility, a method originally proposed by Dinaburg and Sinai. Finally I will explain the key points in developing and refining this method to get optimal results.

# A class of Schrodinger operators with convergent perturbation series

ILYA KACHKOVSKIY

Michigan State

## Time:

Monday, August 12, 2019 - 2:00pm

## Location:

RH 306

Abstract: Rayleigh--Schrodinger perturbation series is one of the main tools of analyzing eigenvalues and eigenvectors of operators in quantum mechanics. The first part of the talk is expository: I will explain a way of representing all terms of the series in terms of graphs with certain structure (similar representations appear in physical literature in various forms). The second part of talk is based on joint work in progress with L. Parnovski and R. Shterenberg. We show that, for a class of lattice Schrodinger operators with unbounded quasiperiodic potentials, one can establish convergence of these series (which is surprising because the eigenvalues are not isolated). The proof is based on the careful analysis of the graphical structure of terms in order to identify cancellations between terms that contain small denominators. The result implies Anderson localization for a class of Maryland-type models on higher-dimensional lattices.

# On the kinetic description of the long-time behavior of dispersive PDE

Zaher Hani

## Institution:

University of Michigan

## Time:

Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - 11:00am to 12:00pm

## Location:

RH 306

Wave turbulence theory claims that at very long timescales, and in appropriate limiting regimes, the effective behavior of a nonlinear dispersive PDE on a large domain can be described by a kinetic equation called the "wave kinetic equation". This is the wave-analog of Boltzmann's equation for particle collisions. We shall consider the nonlinear Schrodinger equation on a large box with periodic boundary conditions, and explore some of its effective long-time behaviors at time scales that are shorter than the conjectured kinetic time scale, but still long enough to exhibit the onset of the kinetic behavior. (This is joint work with Tristan Buckmaster, Pierre Germain, and Jalal Shatah).

# Non-stationary localized oscillations of an infinite Bernoulli-Euler beam

E.V.Shishkina

## Institution:

IPME, St. Petersburg

## Time:

Thursday, June 20, 2019 - 2:00pm to 3:14pm

RH 306