This thesis is devoted to the study of operators on discrete structures. The operators are supposed to be self-adjoint and obey a certain translation invariance property. The discrete structures are given as Cayley graphs via finitely generated groups. Here, sofic groups and amenable groups are in the center of our considerations. Note that every finitely generated amenable group is sofic. We investigate the spectrum of a discrete self-adjoint operator by studying a sequence of finite dimensional analogues of these operators. In the setting of amenable groups we obtain these approximating operators by restricting the operator in question to finite subsets Qn , n ∈ N. These finite dimensional operators are self-adjoint and therefore admit a well-defined normalized eigenvalue counting function. The limit of the normalized eigenvalue counting functions when |Qn | → ∞ (if it exists) is called the integrated density of states (IDS). It is a distribution function of a probability measure encoding the distribution of the spectrum of the operator in question on the real axis. In this thesis, we prove the existence of the IDS in various geometric settings and for different types of operators. The models we consider include deterministic as well as random situations. Depending on the specific setting, we prove existence of the IDS as a weak limit of distribution functions or even as a uniform limit. Moreover, in certain situations we are able to express the IDS via a semi-explicit formula using the trace of the spectral projection of the original operator. This is sometimes referred to as the validity of the Pastur-Shubin trace formula. In the most general geometric setting we study, the operators are defined on Cayley graphs of sofic groups. Here we prove weak convergence of the eigenvalue counting functions and verify the validity of the Pastur-Shubin trace formula for random and non-random operators . These results apply to operators which not necessarily bounded or of finite hopping range. The methods are based on resolvent techniques. This theory is established without having an ergodic theorem for sofic groups at hand. Note that ergodic theory is the usual tool used in the proof of convergence results of this type. Specifying to operators on amenable groups we are able to prove stronger results. In the discrete case, we show that the IDS exists uniformly for a certain class of finite hopping range operators. This is obtained by using a Banach space-valued ergodic theorem. We show that this applies to eigenvalue counting functions, which implies their convergence with respect to the Banach space norm, in this case the supremum norm. Thus, the heart of this theory is the verification of the Banach space-valued ergodic theorem. Proceeding in two steps we first prove this result for so-called ST-amenable groups. Then, using results from the theory of ε-quasi tilings, we prove a version of the Banach space-valued ergodic theorem which is valid for all amenable groups. Focusing on random operators on amenable groups, we prove uniform existence of the IDS without the assumption that the operator needs to be of finite hopping range or bounded. Moreover, we verify the Pastur-Shubin trace formula. Here we present different techniques. First we show uniform convergence of the normalized eigenvalue counting functions adapting the technique of the Banach space-valued ergodic theorem from the deterministic setting. In a second approach we use weak convergence of the eigenvalue counting functions and additionally obtain control over the convergence at the jumps of the IDS. These ingredients are applied to verify uniform existence of the IDS. In both situations we employ results from the theory of large deviations, in order to deal with long-range interactions.

In this thesis, we develop a framework that generalizes the previously known notions of theta-summable Fredholm modules to the setting of locally convex dg algebras. By introducing an additional action of the Clifford algebra, we may treat the even and odd cases simultaneously. In particular, we recover the theory developed by Güneysu/Ludewig and extend the definition of odd theta-summable Fredholm modules to the differential graded category. We then construct a Chern character, which serves as a differential graded refinement of the JLO cocycle, and prove that it has all the expected analytical and homological properties. As an application, we prove an odd noncommutative index theorem relating the spectral flow of a theta-summable Fredholm module to the pairing of the Chern character with the odd Bismut-Chern character in entire (differential graded) cyclic homology, thereby extending results obtained by Güneysu/Cacciatori and Getzler.

The main goal of our thesis is to understand qualitative properties of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the semi-linear wave model with time-dependent speed and dissipation. We greatly benefited from very precise estimates for the corresponding linear problem in order to obtain the global existence (in time) of small data solutions. This reason motivated us to introduce very carefully a complete description for classification of our models: scattering, non-effective, effective, over-damping. We have considered those separately.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Höhe (-log Determinante) kompakter nicht-singulärer heisenbergartiger Nilmannigfaltigkeiten. Heisenbergartige Nilmannigfaltigkeiten sind Verallgemeinerungen von Heisenbergmannigfaltigkeiten, d.h., kompakter Quotienten der Heisenberg-Gruppe, ausgestattet mit einer linksinvarianten Metrik. Zunächst werden explizite Formeln für die spektrale Zeta-Funktion und die Höhe bewiesen. Mithilfe dieser Formeln werden im Weiteren mehrere Resultate zur Existenz unterer Schranken/Minima der Höhe auf verschiedenen Moduli bewiesen. Zum Beispiel ist die Höhe stets von unten beschränkt, wenn man nur Metriken vom Heisenberg-Typ und mit Volumen 1 auf einer gegebenen Nilmannigfaltigkeit betrachtet. Im Gegensatz dazu hängt die Existenz unterer Schranken für die Höhe auf dem Modulraum der heisenbergartigen Metriken mit Volumen 1 von der Dimension Modulo 4 der zugrundeliegenden Mannigfaltigkeit ab. Im letzten Abschnitt werden konkrete Minima der Höhe behandelt. Wir zeigen, dass gewisse 3-, 5-, 9- und 25-dimensionale Nilmannigfaltigkeiten vom Heisenberg-Typ lokale Minima sind. Diese stehen in Zusammenhang mit den Minima der Höhe flacher Tori in der jeweiligen Dimension minus 1. Zum Abschluss werden diejenigen linksinvarianten Metriken charakterisiert, an denen die Höhe ein globales Minimum auf einer gegebenen dreidimensionalen Nilmannigfaltigkeit annimmt, indem sie zur Höhe flacher 2-dimensionaler Tori in Bezug gesetzt werden. / This thesis deals with the height (-log determinant) of compact nonsingular Heisenberg-like nilmanifolds. Heisenberg-like nilmanifolds are generalisations of Heisenberg manifolds, i.e., compact quotients of the Heisenberg group endowed with a left invariant metric. First, an explicit formula for the spectral zeta-function and the height is proved. By means of these formulas, several results concerning the existence of lower bounds/minima for the height on different moduli are proved. For example, while the height is always bounded from below when one considers only volume normalised Heisenberg-type metrics on a fixed nilmanifold, the existence of lower bounds for the height on the moduli space of volume normalised Heisenberg-like metrics depends on the dimension modulo 4 of the underlying nilmanifold. In the last part, we consider concrete minima of the height on Heisenberg manifolds. We show that certain 3-, 5-, 9- and 25-dimensional Heisenberg-type nilmanifolds are (local) minima for the height. These nilmanifolds are related to the minima of the height of flat tori in dimensions one less. Finally, the left invariant metrics at which the height attains a global minimum on any three-dimensional nilmanifold are characterised by relating them to the height of flat 2-dimensional tori.

In dieser Dissertation untersuchen wir das Verhalten von Schrödinger-Operatoren unter Riemannschen Überlagerungen. Wir betrachten folgende Situation: Sei eine Riemannsche Überlagerung und ein Schrödinger-Operator S mit glattem, von unten beschränktem Potential auf der Basismannigfaltigkeit gegeben. Sei S‘ der Lift von S auf die Überlagerungsmannigfaltigkeit. Man sieht leicht, dass das Minimum des Spektrums von S nicht größer als das Minimum des Spektrums von S‘ ist. R. Brooks hat als erster untersucht, wann die Gleichheit gilt. Er bewies insbesondere, dass eine normale Riemannsche Überlagerung einer geschlossenen Mannigfaltigkeit genau dann amenabel ist, wenn sie das Minimum des Spektrums des Laplace-Operators unverändert lässt. Zusammen mit W. Ballmann und H. Matthiesen bewiesen wir, dass amenable Riemannsche Überlagerungen immer das Minimum des Spektrums von Schrödinger-Operatoren erhalten; dies verallgemeinert Resultate von R. Brooks sowie von P. Bérard und Ph. Castillon. In dieser Dissertation beweisen wir, dass im Fall vollständiger Mannigfaltigkeiten das Spektrum von S im Spektrum von S‘ enthalten ist. Tatsächlich beweisen wir diese Beziehung sogar für eine deutlich größere Klasse von Differentialoperatoren. Obwohl Amenabilität eine natürliche Bedingung für die Gleichheit der Minima der Spektren ist, ist es unklar, inwieweit diese Bedingung optimal ist. In dieser Dissertation beweisen wir: Wenn eine Riemannsche Überlagerung das Minimum des Spektrums eines Schrödinger-Operators erhält, und wenn dieses zum diskreten Spektrum des Operators auf der Basismannigfaltigkeit gehört, dann ist die Überlagerung amenabel. Man beachte, dass wir keinerlei geometrische oder topologische Bedingungen an die Mannigfaltigkeiten stellen. Dies verallgemeinert sowohl frühere Resultate von R. Brooks, T. Roblin und S. Tapie als auch ein kürzliches Resultat aus einer gemeinsamen Arbeit mit W. Ballmann und H. Matthiesen. / In this thesis, we investigate the behavior of the spectrum of Schrödinger operators under Riemannian coverings. To set the stage, consider a Riemannian covering and a Schrödinger operator S on the base manifold, with smooth potential bounded from below potential. Let S’ be the lift of S on the covering space. It is easy to see that the bottom (that is, the minimum) of the spectrum of S is no greater than the bottom of the spectrum of S’. R. Brooks was the first one to examine when the equality holds. In particular, he proved that a normal Riemannian covering of a closed manifold is amenable if and only if it preserves the bottom of the spectrum of the Laplacian. Generalizing former results of R. Brooks, and P. Berard and Ph. Castillon, in a joint work with W. Ballmann and H. Matthiesen, we proved that amenable Riemannian coverings preserve the bottom of the spectrum of Schrödinger operators. In this thesis, we prove that if, in addition, the manifolds are complete, then the spectrum of S is contained in the spectrum of S’. As a matter of fact, we establish this result for a quite wide class of differential operators. Although amenability is a natural assumption for the preservation of the bottom of the spectrum, it is not clear to what extent it is optimal. In this thesis, we prove that if a Riemannian covering preserves the bottom of the spectrum of a Schrödinger operator, which belongs to the discrete spectrum of the operator on the base manifold, then the covering is amenable. It is worth to point out that we do not impose any geometric or topological assumptions on the manifolds. This generalizes former results by R. Brooks, T. Roblin and S. Tapie, and a recent result of a joint work with W. Ballmann and H. Matthiesen.

The topic of this thesis is a diffusion process on a potential landscape which is given by a smooth Hamiltonian function in the regime of small noise. The work provides a new proof of the Eyring-Kramers formula for the Poincaré inequality of the associated generator of the diffusion. The Poincaré inequality characterizes the spectral gap of the generator and establishes the exponential rate of convergence towards equilibrium in the L²-distance. This result was first obtained by Bovier et. al. in 2004 relying on potential theory. The presented approach in the thesis generalizes to obtain also asymptotic sharp estimates of the constant in the logarithmic Sobolev inequality. The optimal constant in the logarithmic Sobolev inequality characterizes the convergence rate to equilibrium with respect to the relative entropy, which is a stronger distance as the L²-distance and slightly weaker than the L¹-distance. The optimal constant has here no direct spectral representation. The proof makes use of the scale separation present in the dynamics. The Eyring-Kramers formula follows as a simple corollary from the two main results of the work: The first one shows that the associated Gibbs measure restricted to a basin of attraction has a good Poincaré and logarithmic Sobolev constants providing the fast convergence of the diffusion to metastable states. The second main ingredient is a mean-difference estimate. Here a weighted transportation distance is used. It contains the main contribution to the Poincaré and logarithmic Sobolev constant, resulting from exponential long waiting times of jumps between metastable states of the diffusion.

This thesis is devoted to the study of operators on discrete structures. The operators are supposed to be self-adjoint and obey a certain translation invariance property. The discrete structures are given as Cayley graphs via finitely generated groups. Here, sofic groups and amenable groups are in the center of our considerations. Note that every finitely generated amenable group is sofic. We investigate the spectrum of a discrete self-adjoint operator by studying a sequence of finite dimensional analogues of these operators. In the setting of amenable groups we obtain these approximating operators by restricting the operator in question to finite subsets Qn , n ∈ N. These finite dimensional operators are self-adjoint and therefore admit a well-defined normalized eigenvalue counting function. The limit of the normalized eigenvalue counting functions when |Qn | → ∞ (if it exists) is called the integrated density of states (IDS). It is a distribution function of a probability measure encoding the distribution of the spectrum of the operator in question on the real axis. In this thesis, we prove the existence of the IDS in various geometric settings and for different types of operators. The models we consider include deterministic as well as random situations. Depending on the specific setting, we prove existence of the IDS as a weak limit of distribution functions or even as a uniform limit. Moreover, in certain situations we are able to express the IDS via a semi-explicit formula using the trace of the spectral projection of the original operator. This is sometimes referred to as the validity of the Pastur-Shubin trace formula. In the most general geometric setting we study, the operators are defined on Cayley graphs of sofic groups. Here we prove weak convergence of the eigenvalue counting functions and verify the validity of the Pastur-Shubin trace formula for random and non-random operators . These results apply to operators which not necessarily bounded or of finite hopping range. The methods are based on resolvent techniques. This theory is established without having an ergodic theorem for sofic groups at hand. Note that ergodic theory is the usual tool used in the proof of convergence results of this type. Specifying to operators on amenable groups we are able to prove stronger results. In the discrete case, we show that the IDS exists uniformly for a certain class of finite hopping range operators. This is obtained by using a Banach space-valued ergodic theorem. We show that this applies to eigenvalue counting functions, which implies their convergence with respect to the Banach space norm, in this case the supremum norm. Thus, the heart of this theory is the verification of the Banach space-valued ergodic theorem. Proceeding in two steps we first prove this result for so-called ST-amenable groups. Then, using results from the theory of ε-quasi tilings, we prove a version of the Banach space-valued ergodic theorem which is valid for all amenable groups. Focusing on random operators on amenable groups, we prove uniform existence of the IDS without the assumption that the operator needs to be of finite hopping range or bounded. Moreover, we verify the Pastur-Shubin trace formula. Here we present different techniques. First we show uniform convergence of the normalized eigenvalue counting functions adapting the technique of the Banach space-valued ergodic theorem from the deterministic setting. In a second approach we use weak convergence of the eigenvalue counting functions and additionally obtain control over the convergence at the jumps of the IDS. These ingredients are applied to verify uniform existence of the IDS. In both situations we employ results from the theory of large deviations, in order to deal with long-range interactions.

The focus of this paper is on conditional stability estimates for ill-posed inverse problems in partial differential equations. Conditional stability estimates have been obtained in the literature by a couple different methods. In this paper we propose a method called interpolation method, which is based on interpolation in variable Hilbert scales. We are going to work out the theoretical background of this method and show that optimal conditional stability estimates are obtained. The capability of our method is illustrated by a comprehensive collection of different inverse and ill-posed PDE problems containing elliptic and parabolic problems, one source problem and the problem of analytic continuation.

Wir betrachten die lineare inverse Probleme mit gestörter rechter Seite und gestörtem Operator in Hilberträumen, die inkorrekt sind. Um die Auswirkung der Inkorrektheit zu verringen, müssen spezielle Lösungsmethode angewendet werden, hier nutzen wir die sogenannte Tikhonov Regularisierungsmethode. Die Regularisierungsparameter wählen wir aus das verallgemeinerte Defektprinzip. Eine typische numerische Methode zur Lösen der nichtlinearen äquivalenten Defektgleichung ist Newtonverfahren. Wir schreiben einen Algorithmus, die global und monoton konvergent für beliebige Startwerte garantiert. Um die Stabilität zu garantieren, benutzen wir die Glattheit der Lösung, dann erhalten wir eine sogenannte bedingte Stabilität. Wir demonstrieren die sogenannte Interpolationsmethode zur Herleitung von bedingten Stabilitätsabschätzungen bei inversen Problemen für partielle Differentialgleichungen.

This thesis is devoted to the study of optimal control problems governed by a quasistatic, thermoviscoplastic model at small strains with linear kinematic hardening, von Mises yield condition and mixed boundary conditions. Mathematically, the thermoviscoplastic equations are given by nonlinear partial differential equations and a variational inequality of second kind in order to represent the elastic, plastic and thermal effects. Taking into account thermal effects we have to handle numerous mathematical challenges during the analysis of the thermoviscoplastic model, mainly due to the low integrability of the nonlinear terms on the right-hand side of the heat equation. One of our main results is the existence of a unique weak solution, which is proved by means of a fixed-point argument and by employing maximal parabolic regularity theory. Furthermore, we define the related control-to-state mapping and investigate properties of this mapping such as boundedness, weak continuity and local Lipschitz continuity. Another major result is the finding that the mapping is Hadamard differentiable; a main ingredient is the reformulation of the variational inequality, the so called viscoplastic flow rule, as a Banach space-valued ordinary differential equation with non-differentiable right-hand side. Subsequently, we consider an optimal control problem governed by thermoviscoplasticity and show the existence of a minimizer. Finally, close this thesis with numerical examples. / Diese Arbeit ist der Untersuchung von Optimalsteuerproblemen gewidmet, denen ein quasistatisches, thermoviskoplastisches Model mit kleinen Deformationen, mit linearem kinematischen Hardening, von Mises Fließbedingung und gemischten Randbedingungen zu Grunde liegt. Mathematisch werden thermoviskoplastische Systeme durch nichtlineare partielle Differentialgleichungen und eine variationelle Ungleichung der zweiten Art beschrieben, um die elastischen, plastischen und thermischen Effekte abzubilden. Durch die Miteinbeziehung thermischer Effekte, treten verschiedene mathematische Schwierigkeiten während der Analysis des thermoviskoplastischen Systems auf, die ihren Ursprung hauptsächlich in der schlechten Regularität der nichtlinearen Terme auf der rechten Seite der Wärmeleitungsgleichung haben. Eines unserer Hauptresultate ist die Existenz einer eindeutigen schwachen Lösung, welches wir mit Hilfe von einem Fixpunktargument und unter Anwendung von maximaler parabolischer Regularitätstheorie beweisen. Zudem definieren wir die entsprechende Steuerungs-Zustands-Abbildung und untersuchen Eigenschaften dieser Abbildung wie die Beschränktheit, schwache Stetigkeit und lokale Lipschitz Stetigkeit. Ein weiteres wichtiges Resultat ist, dass die Abbildung Hadamard differenzierbar ist; Hauptbestandteil des Beweises ist die Umformulierung der variationellen Ungleichung, der sogenannten viskoplastischen Fließregel, als eine Banachraum-wertige gewöhnliche Differentialgleichung mit nichtdifferenzierbarer rechter Seite. Schließlich runden wir diese Arbeit mit numerischen Beispielen ab.