Zeta and Fredholm determinants of self-adjoint operators

Abstract

Let $L$ be a self-adjoint invertible operator in a Hilbert space such that $L^{-1}$ is $p$-summable. Under a certain discrete dimension spectrum assumption on $L$, we study the relation between the (regularized) Fredholm determinant, $\det_{p}(I+z\cdot L^{-1})$, on the one hand and the zeta regularized determinant, $\det_{\zeta}(L+z)$, on the other. One of the main results is the formula \begin{equation*} \frac{\det_{\zeta} (L + z)}{\det_{\zeta} (L)} = \exp \left( \sum_{j=1}^{p-1} \frac{z^j}{j!} \cdot \frac{d^j}{dz^j} \log \det\nolimits_{\zeta} (L+z) |_{z=0} \right) \cdot \det\nolimits_{p}(I + z \cdot L^{-1} ). \end{equation*} We show that the derivatives $\frac{d^j}{dz^j} \log \det\nolimits_{\zeta} (L+z) |_{z=0}$ can be expressed in terms of (regularized) zeta values and heat trace coefficients of $L$. Furthermore, we give a general criterion in terms of the heat trace coefficients (and which is, e.g., fulfilled for large classes of elliptic operators) which guarantees that the constant term in the asymptotic expansion of the Fredholm determinant, $\log\det_{p} (I+z\cdot L^{-1})$, equals the zeta determinant of $L$.