The problem of maximizing the L p norms of chords connecting points on a closed curve separated by arc length u arises in electrostatic and quantum-mechanical problems. It is known that among all closed curves of fixed length, the unique maximizing shape is the circle for 1 p 2, but this is not the case for sufficiently large values of p. Here we determine the critical value p c (u) of p above which the circle is not a local maximizer finding, in particular, that p c (1 2 L)= 5 2. This corrects a claim made in [P. Exner, EM Harrell, M. Loss, Lett. Math. Phys. 75 (2006) 225].

We demonstrate how the inverse scattering problem of a quantum star graph can be solved by means of diagonalization of the Hermitian unitary matrix when the vertex coupling is of the scale-invariant (or Flp-Tsutsui) form. This enables the construction of quantum graphs with desired properties in a tailor-made fashion. The procedure is illustrated on the example of quantum vertices with equal transmission probabilities.

Quantum graphs attracted a lot of interest recently. There are several reasons for that. On one hand these models are useful as descriptions of various structures prepared from semiconductor wires, carbon nanotubes, and other substances. On the other hand they provide a tool to study properties of quantum dynamics in situations when the system has a nontrivial geometrical or topological structure. Quantum graph models contain typically free parameters related to coupling of the wave functions at the graph vertices, and to get full grasp of the theory one has to understand their physical meaning. A natural approach to this question is to investigate fat graphs, that is, systems of thin tubes built over the skeleton of a given graph, and to analyze its limit as the tube thickness tends to zero.

In this paper we obtain sharp LiebThirring inequalities for a Schrdinger operator on semiaxis with a matrix potential and show how they can be used to other related problems. Among them are spectral inequalities on star graphs and spectral inequalities for Schrdinger operators on half-spaces with Robin boundary conditions.

We derive asymptotic expansion for the spectrum of Hamiltonians with a strong attractive interaction supported by a smooth surface in R 3, either infinite and asymptotically planar, or compact and closed. Its second term is found to be determined by a Schrdinger type operator with an effective potential expressed in terms of the interaction support curvatures.