We analyze a family of singular Schrdinger operators describing a Neumann waveguide with a periodic array of singular traps of a delta\prime type. We show that in the limit when perpendicular size of the guide tends to zero and the delta\prime interactions are appropriately scaled, the first spectral gap is determined exclusively by geometric properties of the traps.

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.

Bisch and Jones proposed the classification of planar algebras by simple generators and relations. They investigated with the second author the classification of planar algebras generated by 2-boxes. In this paper, we classify singly-generated Thurston-relation planar algebras, defined as subfactor planar algebras generated by a 3-box satisfying a relation proposed by Dylan Thurston. Our main result shows that such subfactor planar algebras are either the E6 subfactor planar algebras or belong to a two-parameter family of planar algebras arising from the representations of type A quantum groups. We introduce a new method for determining positivity of the Markov trace of planar algebras in this family.