Dirichlet-Neumann bracketing for a class of banded Toeplitz matrices

We consider boundary conditions of self-adjoint banded Toeplitz matrices. We ask if boundary conditions exist for banded self-adjoint Toeplitz matrices which satisfy operator inequalities of Dirichlet-Neumann bracketing type. For a special class of banded Toeplitz matrices including integer powers of the discrete Laplacian we find such boundary conditions. Moreover, for this class we give a lower bound on the spectral gap above the lowest eigenvalue.