Weyl formulae for Schr\"odinger operators with critically singular potentials

Abstract

We obtain generalizations of classical versions of the Weyl formula involving Schr\"odinger operators $H_V=-\Delta_g+V(x)$ on compact boundaryless Riemannian manifolds with critically singular potentials $V$. In particular, we extend the classical results of Avakumovi\'{c} , Levitan and H\"ormander by obtaining $O(\lambda^{n-1})$ bounds for the error term in the Weyl formula in the universal case when we merely assume that $V$ belongs to the Kato class, ${\mathcal K}(M)$, which is the minimal assumption to ensure that $H_V$ is essentially self-adjoint and bounded from below or has favorable heat kernel bounds. In this case, we can also obtain extensions of the Duistermaat-Guillemin theorem yielding $o(\lambda^{n-1})$ bounds for the error term under generic conditions on the geodesic flow, and we can also extend B\'erard's theorem yielding $O(\lambda^{n-1}/\log \lambda)$ error bounds under the assumption that the principal curvatures are non-positive everywhere. We can obtain further improvements for tori, which are essentially optimal, if we strengthen the assumption on the potential to $V\in L^p(M)\cap {\mathcal K}(M)$ for appropriate exponents $p=p_n$.