Essential selfadjointness of the graph-Laplacian

Abstract

We study the operator theory associated with such infinite graphs $G$ as occur in electrical networks, in fractals, in statistical mechanics, and even in internet search engines. Our emphasis is on the determination of spectral data for a natural Laplace operator associated with the graph in question. This operator $\Delta$ will depend not only on $G$, but also on a prescribed positive real valued function $c$ defined on the edges in $G$. In electrical network models, this function $c$ will determine a conductance number for each edge. We show that the corresponding Laplace operator $\Delta$ is automatically essential selfadjoint. By this we mean that $\Delta$ is defined on the dense subspace $\mathcal{D}$ (of all the real valued functions on the set of vertices $G^{0}$ with finite support) in the Hilbert space $l^{2}% (G^{0})$. The conclusion is that the closure of the operator $\Delta$ is selfadjoint in $l^{2}(G^{0})$, and so in particular that it has a unique spectral resolution, determined by a projection valued measure on the Borel subsets of the infinite half-line. We prove that generically our graph Laplace operator $\Delta=\Delta_{c}$ will have continuous spectrum. For a given infinite graph $G$ with conductance function $c$, we set up a system of finite graphs with periodic boundary conditions such the finite spectra, for an ascending family of finite graphs, will have the Laplace operator for $G$ as its limit.