Path integrals and the essential self-adjointness of differential operators on noncompact manifolds

Abstract: We consider Schr\"odinger operators on possibly noncompact Riemannian manifolds, acting on sections in vector bundles, with locally square integrable potentials whose negative part is in the underlying Kato class. Using path integral methods, we prove that under geodesic completeness these differential operators are essentially self-adjoint on the space of smooth functions with compact support, and that the corresponding operator closures are semibounded from below. These results apply to nonrelativistic Pauli-Dirac operators that describe the energy of Hydrogen type atoms on Riemannian 3-manifolds.