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Lyapunov Exponents and Spectral Analysis of Ergodic Schrödinger Operators: A Survey of Kotani Theory and its Applications

The absolutely continuous spectrum of an ergodic family of one-dimensional Schrödinger operators is completely determined by the Lyapunov exponent as shown by Ishii, Kotani and Pastur. Moreover, the part of the theory developed by Kotani gives powerful tools for proving the absence of absolutely continuous spectrum, the presence of absolutely continuous spectrum, and even the presence of purely absolutely continuous spectrum. We review these results and their recent applications to a number of problems: the absence of absolutely continuous spectrum for rough potentials, the absence of absolutely continuous spectrum for potentials defined by the doubling map on the circle, and the absence of singular spectrum for the subcritical almost Mathieu operator.