Laplace and Schrödinger operators without eigenvalues on homogeneous amenable graphs

Abstract

A one-by-one exhaustion is a combinatorial/geometric condition which excludes eigenvalues from the spectra of Laplace and Schrödinger operators on graphs. Isoperimetric inequalities in graphs with a cocompact automorphism group provide an upper bound on the von Neumann dimension of the space of eigenfunctions. Any finitely generated indicable amenable group has a Cayley graph without eigenvalues. There exists a finitely generated group G with finite generating sets S and S' such that the adjacency operator of the Cayley graph of (G,S) has no eigenvalue while the adjacency operator of the Cayley graph of (G,S') has pure point spectrum.

37 pages, 3 figures