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In mathematical analysis a pseudo-differential operator is an extension of the concept of differential operator. Pseudo-differential operators are used extensively in
the theory of partial differential equations and quantum field theory.
Contents
History
Motivation
Linear differential operators with constant coefficients
Representation of solutions to partial differential equations
Definition of pseudo-differential operators
Properties
Kernel of pseudo-differential operator
See also
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
History
The study of pseudo-differential operators began in the mid 1960s with the work of Kohn, Nirenberg, Hörmander, Unterberger and Bokobza.[1]
They played an influential role in the second proof of the Atiyah–Singer index theorem via K-theory. Atiyah and Singer thanked Hörmander for assistance with
understanding the theory of Pseudo-differential operators.[2]
Motivation
which acts on smooth functions with compact support in Rn . This operator can be written as a composition of a Fourier transform, a simple multiplication by the
polynomial function (called the symbol)
(1)
is an iterated partial derivative, where ∂j means differentiation with respect to the j-th variable. We introduce the constants to facilitate the calculation of Fourier
transforms.
we (formally) apply the Fourier transform on both sides and obtain the algebraic equation
If the symbol P(ξ) is never zero when ξ ∈ Rn , then it is possible to divide by P(ξ):
The last assumption can be weakened by using the theory of distributions. The first two assumptions can be weakened as follows.
This is similar to formula (1), except that 1/P(ξ) is not a polynomial function, but a function of a more general kind.
(2)
where is the Fourier transform of u and the symbol P(x,ξ) in the integrand belongs to a certain symbol class. For instance, if P(x,ξ) is an infinitely differentiable
function on Rn × Rn with the property
for all x,ξ ∈Rn , all multiindices α,β, some constants Cα, β and some real number m, then P belongs to the symbol class of Hörmander. The corresponding
operator P(x,D) is called a pseudo-differential operator of order m and belongs to the class
Properties
Linear differential operators of order m with smooth bounded coefficients are pseudo-differential operators of order m. The composition PQ of two pseudo-
differential operators P, Q is again a pseudo-differential operator and the symbol of PQ can be calculated by using the symbols of P and Q. The adjoint and transpose
of a pseudo-differential operator is a pseudo-differential operator.
If a differential operator of order m is (uniformly) elliptic (of order m) and invertible, then its inverse is a pseudo-differential operator of order −m, and its symbol can
be calculated. This means that one can solve linear elliptic differential equations more or less explicitly by using the theory of pseudo-differential operators.
Differential operators are local in the sense that one only needs the value of a function in a neighbourhood of a point to determine the effect of the operator. Pseudo-
differential operators are pseudo-local, which means informally that when applied to a distribution they do not create a singularity at points where the distribution was
already smooth.
for a polynomial p in D (which is called the symbol), a pseudo-differential operator has a symbol in a more general class of functions. Often one can reduce a problem
in analysis of pseudo-differential operators to a sequence of algebraic problems involving their symbols, and this is the essence of microlocal analysis.
Kernel of pseudo-differential operator
Pseudo-differential operators can be represented by kernels. The singularity of the kernel on the diagonal depends on the degree of the corresponding operator. In fact,
if the symbol satisfies the above differential inequalities with m ≤ 0, it can be shown that the kernel is a singular integral kernel.
See also
Differential algebra for a definition of pseudo-differential operators in the context of differential algebras and differential rings.
Fourier transform
Fourier integral operator
Oscillatory integral operator
Sato's fundamental theorem
Footnotes
1. Stein 1993, Chapter 6
2. Atiyah & Singer 1968, p. 486
References
Stein, Elias (1993), Harmonic Analysis: Real-Variable Methods, Orthogonality and Oscillatory Integrals, Princeton University Press.
Atiyah, Michael F.; Singer, Isadore M. (1968), "The Index of Elliptic Operators I", Annals of Mathematics, 87 (3): 484–530, doi:10.2307/1970715 (h
ttps://doi.org/10.2307%2F1970715), JSTOR 1970715 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1970715)
Further reading
Michael E. Taylor, Pseudodifferential Operators, Princeton Univ. Press 1981. ISBN 0-691-08282-0
M. A. Shubin, Pseudodifferential Operators and Spectral Theory, Springer-Verlag 2001. ISBN 3-540-41195-X
Francois Treves, Introduction to Pseudo Differential and Fourier Integral Operators, (University Series in Mathematics), Plenum Publ. Co. 1981.
ISBN 0-306-40404-4
F. G. Friedlander and M. Joshi, Introduction to the Theory of Distributions, Cambridge University Press 1999. ISBN 0-521-64971-4
Hörmander, Lars (1987). The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators III: Pseudo-Differential Operators. Springer. ISBN 3-540-49937-7.
External links
Lectures on Pseudo-differential Operators (https://arxiv.org/abs/math.AP/9906155) by Mark S. Joshi on arxiv.org.
"Pseudo-differential operator" (https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Pseudo-differential_operator), Encyclopedia of Mathematics,
EMS Press, 2001 [1994]
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