Extremal spectral gaps for periodic Schrödinger operators^*

¹ Department of Mathematical Sciences, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, USA.
² Department of Mathematics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.

^** Corresponding author: ckao@cmc.edu

Received: 1 September 2017
Accepted: 23 April 2018

Abstract

The spectrum of a Schrödinger operator with periodic potential generally consists of bands and gaps. In this paper, for fixed m, we consider the problem of maximizing the gap-to-midgap ratio for the mth spectral gap over the class of potentials which have fixed periodicity and are pointwise bounded above and below. We prove that the potential maximizing the mth gap-to-midgap ratio exists. In one dimension, we prove that the optimal potential attains the pointwise bounds almost everywhere in the domain and is a step-function attaining the imposed minimum and maximum values on exactly m intervals. Optimal potentials are computed numerically using a rearrangement algorithm and are observed to be periodic. In two dimensions, we develop an efficient rearrangement method for this problem based on a semi-definite formulation and apply it to study properties of extremal potentials. We show that, provided a geometric assumption about the maximizer holds, a lattice of disks maximizes the first gap-to-midgap ratio in the infinite contrast limit. Using an explicit parametrization of two-dimensional Bravais lattices, we also consider how the optimal value varies over all equal-volume lattices.