Long-time decay estimates for the Schr\"odinger equation on manifolds

Abstract

In this paper we develop a quantitative version of Enss' method to establish global-in-time decay estimates for solutions to Schr\"odinger equations on manifolds. To simplify the exposition we shall only consider Hamiltonians of the form $H := - {1/2} \Delta_M$, where $\Delta_M$ is the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a manifold $M$ which is a smooth compact perturbation of three-dimensional Euclidean space $\R^3$ which obeys the non-trapping condition. We establish a global-in-time local smoothing estimate for the Schr\"odinger equation $u_t = -iHu$. The main novelty here is the global-in-time aspect of the estimates, which forces a more detailed analysis on the low and medium frequencies of the evolution than in the local-in-time theory. In particular, to handle the medium frequencies we require the RAGE theorem (which reflects the fact that $H$ has no embedded eigenvalues), together with a quantitative version of Enss' method decomposing the solution asymptotically into incoming and outgoing components, while to handle the low frequencies we need a Poincare-type inequality (which reflects the fact that $H$ has no eigenfunctions or resonances at zero).