On Dirichlet-to-Neumann Maps, Nonlocal Interactions, and Some Applications to Fredholm Determinants

Abstract

We consider Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps associated with (not necessarily self-adjoint) Schrödinger operators describing nonlocal interactions in ${L^2(\Omega; d^n x)}$ , where ${\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n}$ , ${n\in\mathbb{N}}$ , ${n\geq 2}$ , are open sets with a compact, nonempty boundary ${\partial\Omega}$ satisfying certain regularity conditions. As an application we describe a reduction of a certain ratio of Fredholm perturbation determinants associated with operators in ${L^2(\Omega; d^{n} x)}$ to Fredholm perturbation determinants associated with operators in ${L^2(\partial\Omega; d^{n-1} \sigma)}$ , ${n\in\mathbb{N}}$ , ${n\geq 2}$ . This leads to an extension of a variant of a celebrated formula due to Jost and Pais, which reduces the Fredholm perturbation determinant associated with a Schrödinger operator on the half-line ${(0,\infty)}$ , in the case of local interactions, to a simple Wronski determinant of appropriate distributional solutions of the underlying Schrödinger equation.