Wegner estimate and localisation for alloy type operators with minimal support assumptions on the single site potential

Abstract: We prove a Wegner estimate for alloy type models merely assuming that the single site potential is lower bounded by a characteristic function of a thick set, that is a particular set of positive measure. The proof is based on two ingredients: New unique continuation principles or uncertainty relations for linear combinations of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on cubes from [EV20] and established proofs for Wegner estimates, e.g.~from [CHK07]. We obtain a Wegner estimate with optimal volume dependence at all energies, and localisation near the minimum of the spectrum, even for some non-stationary random potentials. We complement the result by showing that a lower bound on the potential by the characteristic function of a thick set is necessary for a (translation uniform) Wegner estimate to hold. Hence, we have identified a sharp condition on the size for the support of random potentials that is sufficient and necessary for the validity of Wegner estimates.