The essential spectrum of Schrödinger operators on lattices

The paper is devoted to the study of the essential spectrum of discrete Schrödinger operators on the lattice Z by means of the limit operators method. This method has been applied by one of the authors to describe the essential spectrum of (continuous) electromagnetic Schrödinger operators, square-root Klein-Gordon operators, and Dirac operators under quite weak assumptions on the behavior of the magnetic and electric potential at infinity. The present paper is aimed to illustrate the applicability and efficiency of the limit operators method to discrete problems as well. We consider the following classes of the discrete Schrödinger operators: 1) operators with slowly oscillating at infinity potentials, 2) operators with periodic and semi-periodic potentials; 3) Schrödinger operators which are discrete quantum analogs of the acoustic propagators for waveguides; 4) operators with potentials having an infinite set of discontinuities; and 5) three-particle Schrödinger operators which describe the motion of two particles around a heavy nuclei on the lattice Z.