English

No Spectral Invisibility for Dissipative Barrier Truncations in Any Dimension

Numerical Analysis 2026-07-24 v1 Mathematical Physics Spectral Theory

Abstract

The dissipative barrier method suppresses spectral pollution, but whether it can itself conceal genuine spectral points has remained open. Known as the graveyard problem in computational spectral theory, the higher-dimensional case has remained unresolved for more than a decade. We resolve it for Schr\"{o}dinger operators in dimensions d2d\geq2; together with the known one-dimensional theorem, this settles the no-invisibility problem in all dimensions. Let A=Δ+VA=-\Delta+V be a Dirichlet Schr\"odinger operator on a connected open set ΩRd\Omega\subseteq\mathbb R^d with VLloc1(Ω)V\in L^1_{\mathrm{loc}}(\Omega) bounded below, and set H=A+iSH=A+iS, where S0S\geq0 and SLp(Ω)S\in L^p(\Omega), with 1<p<1<p<\infty for d=2d=2 and d/2p<d/2\leq p<\infty for d3d\geq3. Let (ΩR)R>0(\Omega_R)_{R>0} be a nested family of nonempty connected bounded open sets such that ΩRΩ\Omega_R\nearrow\Omega as R+R\nearrow+\infty. Denote by HRH_R the Dirichlet truncation of HH to ΩR\Omega_R. We prove that every spectral point of HH is detected by the truncations: for every λσ(H)\lambda\in\sigma(H) and every neighborhood UU of λ\lambda, σ(HR)U\sigma(H_R)\cap U\neq\emptyset for sufficiently large RR. Equivalently, σ(H)lim infRσ(HR)\sigma(H)\subseteq\liminf_{R\to\infty}\sigma(H_R). Thus the barrier method does not trade suppression of spectral pollution for spectral invisibility. No regularity of Ω\partial\Omega is required, and the assumptions reach the critical Sobolev scale. The proof combines compactness of the dissipative form perturbation, Cwikel-type Schatten estimates for Birman--Schwinger operators, generalized strong resolvent convergence, and a reverse Hansmann--Weyl spectral-variation inequality due to Gil'. A two-dimensional numerical example illustrates the absence of spectral invisibility for the truncated dissipative operators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.22120,
  title  = {No Spectral Invisibility for Dissipative Barrier Truncations in Any Dimension},
  author = {Matthew J. Colbrook and Marco Marletta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.22120},
  year   = {2026}
}