Peter Stollmann - Böcker

Disorder is one of the central topics in science today. Over the past 15 years various aspects of the effects of disorder have changed a number of paradigms in mathematics and physics. One such effect is a phenomenon called localization, which describes the very strange behaviour of waves in random media. Instead of travelling through space as they do in ordered environments, localized waves stay in a confined region and are caught by disorder. This work is the first treatment of the subject in monograph or textbook form. The study of disorder has generated enormous research activity in mathematics and physics. Over the past 15 years various aspects of the subject have changed a number of paradigms and have inspired the discovery of deep mathematical techniques to deal with complex problems arising from the effects of disorder. One important effect is a phenomenon called localization, which describes the very strange behaviour of waves in random media -the fact that waves, instead of travelling through space as they do in ordered environments, stay in a confined region (caught by disorder). To date, there is no treatment of this subject in monograph or textbook form.This book fills that gap. "Caught by Disorder" presents: an introduction to disorder that can be grasped by graduate students in a hands-on way; a concise, mathematically rigorous examination of some particular models of disordered systems; a detailed application of the localization phenomenon, worked out in two typical model classes that keep the technicalities at a reasonable level; a thorough examination of new mathematical machinery, in particular, the method of multi-scale analysis; a number of key unsolved problems; an appendix containing the prerequisites of operator theory, as well as other proofs; and examples, illustrations, comprehensive bibliography, author and keyword index. Mathematical background for this book requires only a knowledge of pdes, functional analysis - mainly operator theory and spectral theory - and elementary probability theory.

Disorder is one of the predominant topics in science today. The present text is devoted to the mathematical studyofsome particular cases ofdisordered systems. It deals with waves in disordered media. To understand the significance of the influence of disorder, let us start by describing the propagation of waves in a sufficiently ordered or regular environment. That they do in fact propagate is a basic experience that is verified by our senses; we hear sound (acoustic waves) see (electromagnetic waves) and use the fact that electromagnetic waves travel long distances in many aspects ofour daily lives. The discovery that disorder can suppress the transport properties of a medium is oneof the fundamental findings of physics. In its most prominent practical application, the semiconductor, it has revolutionized the technical progress in the past century. A lot of what we see in the world today depends on that relatively young device. The basic phenomenon of wave propagation in disordered media is called a metal-insulator transition: a disordered medium can exhibit good transport prop­ erties for waves ofrelatively high energy (like a metal) and suppress the propaga­ tion of waves of low energy (like an insulator). Here we are actually talking about quantum mechanical wave functions that are used to describe electronic transport properties. To give an initial idea of why such a phenomenon could occur, we have to recall that in physical theories waves are represented by solutions to certain partial differential equations. These equations link time derivatives to spatial derivatives.

This book presents 29 invited articles written by participants of the International Workshop on Operator Theory and its Applications held in Chemnitz in 2017. The contributions include both expository essays and original research papers illustrating the diversity and beauty of insights gained by applying operator theory to concrete problems. The topics range from control theory, frame theory, Toeplitz and singular integral operators,  Schrödinger, Dirac, and Kortweg-de Vries operators,  Fourier integral operator zeta-functions, C*-algebras and Hilbert C*-modules to questions from harmonic analysis, Monte Carlo integration, Fibonacci Hamiltonians, and many more.The book offers researchers in operator theory open problems from applications that might stimulate their work and shows those from various applied fields, such as physics, engineering, or numerical mathematics how to use the potential of operator theory to tackle interesting practical problems.