English

On localization of eigenfunctions of the magnetic Laplacian

Analysis of PDEs 2023-09-19 v2 Spectral Theory

Abstract

Let ΩRd\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d and consider the magnetic Laplace operator given by H(A)=(iA(x))2 H(A) = \left(- i\nabla - A(x)\right)^2, where A:ΩRdA:\Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^d, subject to Dirichlet eigenfunction. This operator can, for certain vector fields AA, have eigenfunctions H(A)ψ=λψH(A) \psi = \lambda \psi that are highly localized in a small region of Ω\Omega. The main goal of this paper is to show that if ψ|\psi| assumes its maximum in x0Ωx_0 \in \Omega, then AA behaves `almost' like a conservative vector field in a 1/λ1/\sqrt{\lambda}-neighborhood of x0x_0 in a precise sense: we expect localization in regions where \mboxcurlA\left|\mbox{curl} A \right| is small. The result is illustrated with numerical examples.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.15994,
  title  = {On localization of eigenfunctions of the magnetic Laplacian},
  author = {Jeffrey S. Ovall and Hadrian Quan and Robyn Reid and Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.15994},
  year   = {2023}
}