A Glazman-Povzner-Wienholtz Theorem on graphs

Abstract

The Glazman-Povzner-Wienholtz theorem states that the completeness of a manifold, when combined with the semiboundedness of the Schr\"odinger operator $-\Delta + q$ and suitable local regularity assumptions on $q$, guarantees its essential self-adjointness. Our aim is to extend this result to Schr\"odinger operators on graphs. We first obtain the corresponding theorem for Schr\"odinger operators on metric graphs, allowing in particular distributional potentials $q\in H^{-1}_{\rm loc}$. Moreover, we exploit recently discovered connections between Schr\"odinger operators on metric graphs and weighted graphs in order to prove a discrete version of the Glazman-Povzner-Wienholtz theorem.