Abstract. The Laplace operator in infinite quantum waveguides (e.g., a bent strip or a twisted tube) often has a point-like eigenvalue below the essential spectrum that corresponds to a trapped eigenmode of finite L2 norm. We revisit this statement for resonators with long but finite branches that we call "finite waveguides". Although now there is no essential spectrum and all eigenfunctions have finite L2 norm, the trapping can be understood as an exponential decay of the eigenfunction inside the branches. We describe a general variational formalism for detecting trapped modes in such resonators. For finite waveguides with general cylindrical branches, we obtain a sufficient condition which determines the minimal length of branches for getting a trapped eigenmode. Varying the branch lengths may switch certain eigenmodes from non-trapped to trapped states. These concepts are illustrated for several typical waveguides (L-shape, bent strip, crossing of two stripes, etc.). We conclude that the well-established theory of trapping in infinite waveguides may be incomplete and require further development for being applied to microscopic quantum devices.
We present several applications of mode matching methods in spectral and scattering problems. First, we consider the eigenvalue problem for the Dirichlet Laplacian in a finite cylindrical domain that is split into two subdomains by a "perforated" barrier. We prove that the first eigenfunction is localized in the larger subdomain, i.e., its L 2 norm in the smaller subdomain can be made arbitrarily small by setting the diameter of the "holes" in the barrier small enough. This result extends the well known localization of Laplacian eigenfunctions in dumbbell domains. We also discuss an extension to noncylindrical domains with radial symmetry. Second, we study a scattering problem in an infinite cylindrical domain with two identical perforated barriers. If the holes are small, there exists a low frequency at which an incident wave is fully transmitted through both barriers. This result is counter-intuitive as a single barrier with the same holes would fully reflect incident waves with low frequences.This domain can be naturally decomposed into two rectangular subdomains Ω 1 = (−a 1 , 0) × (0, h 1 ) and Ω 2 = (0, a 2 ) × (0, h 2 ). Without loss of generality, we assume h 1 ≥ h 2 . For each of these subdomains, one can explicitly write a general solution of the equation in (1.1) due to a separation of variables in perpendicular directions x
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