Supersymmetry and Schrödinger-type operators with distributional matrix-valued potentials

Abstract

Building on work on Miura's transformation by Kappeler, Perry, Shubin, and Topalov, we develop a detailed spectral theoretic treatment of Schrödinger operators with matrix-valued potentials, with special emphasis on distributional potential coefficients. Our principal method relies on a supersymmetric (factorization) formalism underlying Miura's transformation, which intimately connects the triple of operators $(D, H_1, H_2)$ of the form

Here $A= I_m (d/dx) + \phi$ in $L^2(\mathbb{R})^m$, with a matrix-valued coefficient $\phi = \phi^* \in L^1_{\text{loc}}(\mathbb{R})^{m \times m}$, $m \in \mathbb{N}$, thus explicitly permitting distributional potential coefficients $V_j$ in $H_j$, $j=1,2$, where

Upon developing Weyl–Titchmarsh theory for these generalized Schrödinger operators $H_j$, with (possibly, distributional) matrix-valued potentials $V_j$, we provide some spectral theoretic applications, including a derivation of the corresponding spectral representations for $H_j$, $j=1,2$. Finally, we derive a local Borg–Marchenko uniqueness theorem for $H_j$, $j=1,2$, by employing the underlying supersymmetric structure and reducing it to the known local Borg–Marchenko uniqueness theorem for $D$.