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Stark-Wannier Ladders and Cubic Exponential Sums

On L 2 (R), we consider the Schrödinger operator (1.1) H ǫ = -- $\partial$ 2 $\partial$x 2 + v(x) -- ǫx, where v is a real analytic 1-periodic function and ǫ is a positive constant. This operator is a model to study a Bloch electron in a constant electric field ([1]). The parameter ǫ is proportional to the electric field. The operator (1.1) was studied both by physicists (see, e.g., the review [6]) and by mathematicians (see, e.g., [9]). Its spectrum is absolutely continuous and fills the real axis. One of main features of H ǫ is the existence of Stark-Wannier ladders. These are ǫ-periodic sequences of resonances, which are poles of the analytic continuation of the resolvent kernel in the lower half plane through the spectrum (see, e.g., [2]). Most of the mathematical work studied the case of small ǫ (see, e.g., [9, 3] and references therein). When ǫ is small, there are ladders exponentially close to the real axis. Actually, only the case of finite gap potentials v was relatively well understood. For these potentials, there is only a finite number of ladders exponentially close to the real axis. It was further noticed that the ladders non-trivially "interact" as ǫ changes, and conjectured that the behavior of the resonances strongly depends on number theoretical properties of ǫ (see, e.g., [1]). In the present note, we only consider the periodic potential v(x) = 2 cos(2$π$x) and study the reflection coefficient r(E) of the Stark-Wannier operator (1.1) in the lower half of the complex plane of the spectral parameter E. The resonances are the poles of the reflection coefficient. We show that, as Im E $\rightarrow$ --$\infty$, the function E $\rightarrow$ 1 r(E) can be asymptotically described in terms of a regularized cubic exponential sum that is a close relative of the cubic exponential sums often encountered in analytic number theory. This explains the dependence of the reflection coefficient on the arithmetic.