The paper discusses quantum graphs with a vertex coupling which interpolates between the common one of the type and a coupling introduced recently by two of the authors which exhibits a preferred orientation. Describing the interpolation family in terms of circulant matrices, we analyze the spectral and scattering property of such vertices, and investigate the band spectrum of the corresponding square lattice graph.

In contrast to the usual quantum systems which have at most a finite number of open spectral gaps if they are periodic in more than one direction, periodic quantum graphs may have gaps arbitrarily high in the spectrum. This property of graph Hamiltonians, being generic in a sense, inspires the question about the existence of graphs with a finite and nonzero number of spectral gaps. We show that the answer depends on the vertex couplings together with commensurability of the graph edges. A finite and nonzero number of gaps is excluded for graphs with scale invariant couplings; on the other hand, we demonstrate that graphs featuring a finite nonzero number of gaps do exist, illustrating the claim on the example of a rectangular lattice with a suitably tuned -coupling at the vertices.

Motivated by a recent application of quantum graphs to model the anomalous Hall effect we discuss quantum graphs the vertices of which exhibit a preferred orientation. We describe an example of such a vertex coupling and analyze the corresponding band spectra of lattices with square and hexagonal elementary cells showing that they depend heavily on the network topology, in particular, on the degrees of the vertices involved.

We consider a class of two-dimensional Schrdinger operator with a singular interaction of the type and a fixed strength supported by an infinite family of concentric, equidistantly spaced circles, and discuss what happens below the essential spectrum when the system is amended by an AharonovBohm flux in the center. It is shown that if , there is a critical value such that the discrete spectrum has an accumulation point when , while for the number of eigenvalues is at most finite, in particular, the discrete spectrum is empty for any fixed and small enough.

We analyze spectral properties of a leaky wire model with a potential bias. It describes a two-dimensional quantum particle exposed to a potential consisting of two parts. One is an attractive -interaction supported by a non-straight, piecewise smooth curve L dividing the plane into two regions of which one, the interior, is convex. The other interaction component is a constant positive potential V0 in one of the regions. We show that in the critical case, V0 = 2, the discrete spectrum is non-void if and only if the bias is supported in the interior. We also analyze the non-critical situations, in particular, we show that in the subcritical case, V0 < 2, the system may have any finite number of bound states provided the angle between the asymptotes of L is small enough.