We consider a Schrdinger particle on a graph consisting of <i>N</i> links joined at a single point. Each link supports a real locally integrable potential <i>V</i> _<i>j</i>; the self-adjointness is ensured by the type boundary condition at the vertex. If all the links are semi-infinite and ideally coupled, the potential decays as <i>x</i> ¹ along each of them, is nonrepulsive in the mean and weak enough, the corresponding Schrdinger operator has a single negative eigenvalue; we find its asymptotic behavior. We also derive a bound on the number of bound states and explain how the coupling constant may be interpreted in terms of a family of squeezed potentials.

We consider the Laplacian in a straight planar strip with Dirichlet boundary which has two Neumann'windows' of the same length, the centres of which are 2l apart, and study the asymptotic behaviour of the discrete spectrum as l. It is shown that there are pairs of eigenvalues around each isolated eigenvalue of a single-window strip and their distances vanish exponentially in the limit l. We derive an asymptotic expansion also in the case where a single window gives rise to a threshold resonance which the presence of the other window turns into a single isolated eigenvalue.

We consider the Dirichlet Laplacian for astrip in \mathbb{R}^2 with one straight boundary and a width \mathbb{R}^2 , where \mathbb{R}^2 is a smooth function of acompact support with a length 2<i>b</i>. We show that in the criticalcase, \mathbb{R}^2 , the operator has nobound statesfor small \mathbb{R}^2 .On the otherhand, a weakly bound state existsprovided \mathbb{R}^2 . In thatcase, there are positive <i>c</i> ₁,<i>c</i> ₂ suchthat the corresponding eigenvalue satisfies \mathbb{R}^2 for all \mathbb{R}^2 sufficiently small.

We consider the Laplacian in a strip R(0,d) with the boundary condition which is Dirichlet except at the segment of a length 2a of one of the boundaries where it is switched to Neumann. This operator is known to have a non-empty and simple discrete spectrum for any a&gt;0. There is a sequence 0&lt;a1&lt;a2&lt; of critical values at which new eigenvalues emerge from the continuum when the Neumann window expands. We find the asymptotic behavior of these eigenvalues around the thresholds showing that the gap is in the leading order proportional to (aan)2 with an explicit coefficient expressed in terms of the corresponding threshold-energy resonance eigenfunction.

Given a complete noncompact surface embedded in R3, we consider the Dirichlet Laplacian in the layer that is defined as a tubular neighborhood of constant width about . Using an intrinsic approach to the geometry of , we generalize the spectral results of the original paper by Duclos et al. [Commun. Math. Phys. 223, 13 (2001)] to the situation when does not possess poles. This enables us to consider topologically more complicated layers and state new spectral results. In particular, we are interested in layers built over surfaces with handles or several cylindrically symmetric ends. We also discuss more general regions obtained by compact deformations of certain .