Various qualitative methods for analyzing the discrete spectrum of SchrOdinger operators have been elaborated during the last three decades-for a review see Eef. 1, Section XIII. 3. They are of a great physical interest, especially because they can provide us with an information about -)*the few-body and many-body Hamlltonians, for which the quantitative methods are usually difficult to be applied. lt is not strange, therefore, that new re3ulta of this type continue to appear.

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.

No abstract uploaded!

No abstract uploaded!

We discuss quantum graphs consisting of a compact part and semi-infinite leads. Such a system may have embedded eigenvalues if some edge lengths in the compact part are rationally related. If such a relation is perturbed, these eigenvalues may turn into resonances; we analyze this effect both generally and in simple examples.