Expansion in generalized eigenfunctions for Laplacians on graphs and metric measure spaces

Abstract: We consider an arbitrary selfadjoint operator on a separable Hilbert space. To this operator we construct an expansion in generalized eigenfunctions in which the original Hilbert space is decomposed as a direct integral of Hilbert spaces consisting of general eigenfunctions. This automatically gives a Plancherel type formula. For suitable operators on metric measure spaces we discuss some growth restrictions on the generalized eigenfunctions. For Laplacians on locally finite graphs the generalized eigenfunctions are exactly the solutions of the corresponding difference equation.