On the bound states of the discrete Schr\"odinger equation with compactly supported potentials

Abstract

The discrete Schr\"odinger operator with the Dirichlet boundary condition is considered on the half-line lattice $n\in \{1,2,3,\dots\}.$ It is assumed that the potential belongs to class $\mathcal A_b,$ i.e. it is real valued, vanishes when $n>b$ with $b$ being a fixed positive integer, and is nonzero at $n=b.$ The proof is provided to show that the corresponding number of bound states, $N,$ must satisfy the inequality $0\le N\le b.$ It is shown that for each fixed nonnegative integer $k$ in the set $\{0,1,2,\dots,b\},$ there exist infinitely many potentials in class $\mathcal A_b$ for which the corresponding Schr\"odinger operator has exactly $k$ bound states. Some auxiliary results are presented to relate the number of bound states to the number of real resonances associated with the corresponding Schr\"odinger operator. The theory presented is illustrated with some explicit examples.