Low-energy eigenstates in a vanishing magnetic field

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the spectral analysis of the semiclassical purely magnetic Laplacian ${\mathcal{L}}_h$, $h>0$, on the plane ${\mathbb{R}}^2$ in the situation where the magnetic field $B$ vanishes uniformly, nondegenerately along an open smooth curve $\Gamma$. We prove the existence of a discrete spectrum for energy windows of the scale $h^{4/3}$ and give complete asymptotics in the semiclassical parameter $h$ for eigenvalues in such windows. Our strategy relies on the microlocalization of the corresponding eigenfunctions close to the zero locus $\Gamma$ and on the implementation of a Born–Oppenheimer strategy through the use of operator-valued pseudodifferential calculus and superadiabatic projectors. This allows us to reduce our spectral analysis to that of effective semiclassical pseudodifferential operators in dimension 1 and apply the well-known semiclassical techniques à la Helffer–Sjöstrand.