Spectral band bracketing for Laplacians on periodic metric graphs

Abstract: We consider Laplacians on periodic metric graphs with unit-length edges. The spectrum of these operators consists of an absolutely continuous part (which is a union of an infinite number of non-degenerated spectral bands) plus an infinite number of flat bands, i.e., eigenvalues of infinite multiplicity. Our main result is a localization of spectral bands in terms of eigenvalues of Dirichlet and Neumann operators on a fundamental domain of the periodic graph. The proof is based on the spectral band localization for discrete Laplacians and on the relation between the spectra of discrete and metric Laplacians.