For a wide class of 2-dimensional periodic elliptic operators, we show that the global extrema of all spectral band functions are isolated.

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Let$f$be a germ of an analytic function at infinity that can be analytically continued along any path in the complex plane deprived of a finite set of points, $${f \in \mathcal{A}(\bar{\mathbb{C}} \setminus A)}$$ , $${\# A< \infty}$$ . J. Nuttall has put forward the important relation between the$maximal domain$of$f$where the function has a single-valued branch and the$domain of convergence$of the diagonal Padé approximants for$f$. The Padé approximants, which are rational functions and thus single-valued, approximate a holomorphic branch of$f$in the domain of their convergence. At the same time most of their poles tend to the boundary of the domain of convergence and the support of their limiting distribution models the system of cuts that makes the function$f$single-valued. Nuttall has conjectured (and proved for many important special cases) that this system of cuts has$minimal logarithmic capacity$among all other systems converting the function$f$to a single-valued branch. Thus the domain of convergence corresponds to the$maximal$(in the sense of$minimal$boundary) domain of single-valued holomorphy for the analytic function $${f\in\mathcal{A}(\bar{\mathbb{C}} \setminus A)}$$ . The complete proof of Nuttall’s conjecture (even in a more general setting where the set$A$has logarithmic capacity 0) was obtained by H. Stahl. In this work, we derive$strong asymptotics$for the denominators of the diagonal Padé approximants for this problem in a rather general setting. We assume that$A$is a finite set of branch points of$f$which have the$algebro-logarithmic character$and which are placed in a$generic position$. The last restriction means that we exclude from our consideration some degenerated “constellations” of the branch points.

A unital ring is called clean (resp. strongly clean) if every element can be written as the sum of an invertible element and an idempotent (resp. an invertible element and an idempotent that commutes). T.Y. Lam proposed a question: which von Neumann algebras are clean as rings? In this paper, we characterize strongly clean von Neumann algebras and prove that all finite von Neumann algebras and all separable infinite factors are clean.

We show that there are 2^{2^{ℵ_0}} different closed ideals in the Banach algebra L(L_p(0,1)),1<p≠2<∞. This solves a problem in A. Pietsch’s 1978 book “Operator Ideals”. The proof is quite different from other methods of producing closed ideals in the space of bounded operators on a Banach space; in particular, the ideals are not contained in the strictly singular operators and yet do not contain projections onto subspaces that are non-Hilbertian. We give a criterion for a space with an unconditional basis to have 2^{2^{ℵ_0}} closed ideals in terms of the existence of a single operator on the space with some special asymptotic properties. We then show that for 1<q<2 the space Xq of Rosenthal, which is isomorphic to a complemented subspace of L_q(0,1), admits such an operator.