We study a charged two-dimensional particle confined to a straight parabolic-potential channel and exposed to a homogeneous magnetic field under the influence of a potential perturbation W. If W is bounded and periodic along the channel, a perturbative argument yields the absolute continuity of the bottom of the spectrum. We show that it can have any finite number of open gaps provided that the confining potential is sufficiently strong. However, if W depends on the periodic variable only, we prove by the Thomas argument that the whole spectrum is absolutely continuous, irrespective of the size of the perturbation. On the other hand, if W is small and satisfies a weak localization condition in the the longitudinal direction, we prove by the Mourre method that a part of the absolutely continuous spectrum persists.

The seek for a new universal formulation for describing various non-equilibrium processes is a central task of modern non-equilibrium thermodynamics. In this paper, a novel steady-state thermodynamic formalism was established for general Markov processes described by the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation. Furthermore, corresponding formalisms of steady-state thermodynamics for master equation and Fokker-Planck equation could be rigorously derived in mathematics. To be concrete, we proved that: 1) in the limit of continuous time, the steady-state thermodynamic formalism for the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation fully agrees with that for the master equation; 2) a similar one-to-one correspondence could be established rigorously between the master equation and Fokker-Planck equation in the limit of large system size; 3) when a Markov process is restrained to one-step jump, the steady-state thermodynamic formalism for the Fokker-Planck equation with discrete state variables also goes to that for master equations, as the discretization step gets smaller and smaller. Our analysis indicated that, with respect to the steady state, general Markov processes admit a unified and self-consistent non-equilibrium thermodynamic formulation, regardless of underlying detailed models.

Schrodinger operators with strongly singular interactions, typically supported by a set of Lebesgue measure zero, eg, by a nite or countable set of points, appeared in quantum mechanics from the very beginning~cf., eg,[35, 28]. Their use had essentially two motivations. First of all, they were expected to provide a reasonable description in the physical situations when the real interaction has a very small range comparing to the other characteristic lengths of the problem, for instance, to the wavelength of the scattered particles. On the other hand, the fact that the interaction support is small and outside it a free solution of the corresponding Schrodinger equation may be used often makes such models explicitly solvable. Until the beginning of the sixties, however, the occasional use of these point interactions remained purely formal. Only after the work of Berezin and Faddeev [11] did it become clear they can be

We study disjointness preserving (quasi-) n-shift operators on C 0 (X), where X is locally compact and Hausdorff. When C 0 (X) admits a quasi-n-shift T, there is a countable subset of X= X{} equipped with a tree-like structure, called -tree, with exactly n joints such that the action of T on C 0 (X) can be implemented as a shift on the -tree. If T is an n-shift, then the -tree is dense in X and thus X is separable. By analyzing the structure of the -tree, we show that every (quasi-) n-shift on c 0 can always be written as a product of n (quasi-) 1-shifts. Although it is not the case for general C 0 (X) as shown by our counter examples, we can do so after dilation.

For a linear isometry T: C 0 (X) C 0 (Y) of finite corank, there is a cofinite subset Y 1 of Y such that Tf| Y 1= h f is a weighted composition operator and X is homeomorphic to a quotient space of Y 1 modulo a finite subset. When X= Y, such a T is called an isometric quasi-n-shift on C 0 (X). In this case, the action of T can be implemented as a shift on a tree-like structure, called a T-tree, in M (X) with exactly n joints. The T-tree is total in M (X) when T is a shift. With these tools, we can analyze the structure of T.