Analytic spectral flow formula for unitaries and Levinson's theorem
Functional Analysis
2026-04-27 v1 K-Theory and Homology
Abstract
We prove an integral formula for the spectral flow of differentiable loops of unitaries of the form 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.22451,
title = {Analytic spectral flow formula for unitaries and Levinson's theorem},
author = {A. Alexander and A. Carey and G. Levitina and A. Rennie},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.22451},
year = {2026}
}