From Toda to KdV

For periodic Toda chains with a large number $N$ of particles we consider states which are $N^{-2}$-close to the equilibrium and constructed by discretizing arbitrary given $C^2-$functions with mesh size $N^{-1}.$ Our aim is to describe the spectrum of the Jacobi matrices $L\_N$ appearing in the Lax pair formulation of the dynamics of these states as $N \to \infty$. To this end we construct two Hill operators $H\_\pm$ -- such operators come up in the Lax pair formulation of the Korteweg-de Vries equation -- and prove by methods of semiclassical analysis that the asymptotics as $N \rightarrow \infty$ of the eigenvalues at the edges of the spectrum of $L\_N$ are of the form $\pm (2-(2N)^{-2} \lambda ^\pm \_n + \cdots )$ where $(\lambda ^\pm \_n)\_{n \geq 0}$ are the eigenvalues of $H\_\pm$. In the bulk of the spectrum, the eigenvalues are $o(N^{-2})$-close to the ones of the equilibrium matrix. As an application we obtain asymptotics of a similar type of the discriminant, associated to $L\_N$.