Schrödinger operators with complex sparse potentials

Abstract: We establish quantitative upper and lower bounds for Schr\"odinger operators with complex potentials that satisfy some weak form of sparsity. Our first result is a quantitative version of an example, due to S.\ Boegli (Comm. Math. Phys., 2017, 352, 629-639), of a Schr\"odinger operator with eigenvalues accumulating to every point of the essential spectrum. The second result shows that the eigenvalue bounds of Frank (Bull. Lond. Math. Soc., 2011, 43, 745-750 and Trans. Amer. Math. Soc., 2018, 370, 219-240) can be improved for sparse potentials. The third result generalizes a theorem of Klaus (Ann. Inst. H. Poincar\'e Sect. A (N.S.), 1983, 38, 7-13) on the characterization of the essential spectrum to the multidimensional non-selfadjoint case. The fourth result shows that, in one dimension, the purely imaginary (non-sparse) step potential has unexpectedly many eigenvalues, comparable to the number of resonances. Our examples show that several known upper bounds are sharp.