Scattering Theory for Automorphic Functions

by Peter D. Lax, Ralph S. Phillips

The application by Fadeev and Pavlov of the Lax-Phillips scattering theory to the automorphic wave equation led Professors Lax and Phillips to reexamine this development within the framework of their theory. This volume sets forth the results of that work in the form of new or more straightforward treatments of the spectral theory of the Laplace-Beltrami operator over fundamental domains of finite area; the meromorphic character over the whole complex plane of the Eisenstein series; and the Selberg trace formula.



1. Introduction. 2. An abstract scattering theory. 3. A modified theory for second order equations with an indefinite energy form. 4. The Laplace-Beltrami operator for the modular group. 5. The automorphic wave equation. 6. Incoming and outgoing subspaces for the automorphic wave equations. 7. The scattering matrix for the automorphic wave equation. 8. The general case. 9. The Selberg trace formula.

Paperback

First published September 1, 1967

About the author

Peter David Lax was a Hungarian-born American mathematician and Abel Prize laureate working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics.
Lax has made important contributions to integrable systems, fluid dynamics and shock waves, solitonic physics, hyperbolic conservation laws, and mathematical and scientific computing, among other fields.
In a 1958 paper Lax stated a conjecture about matrix representations for third order hyperbolic polynomials which remained unproven for over four decades. Interest in the "Lax conjecture" grew as mathematicians working in several different areas recognized the importance of its implications in their field, until it was finally proven to be true in 2003.