In this paper we perform a numerical study of the spectra, eigenstates, and Lyapunov exponents of the skew-shift counterpart to Harper’s equation. This study is motivated by various conjectures on the spectral theory of these ‘pseudo-random’ models, which are reviewed in detail in the initial sections of the paper. The numerics carried out at different scales are within agreement with the conjectures and show a striking difference compared with the spectral features of the Almost Mathieu model. In particular our numerics establish a small upper bound on the gaps in the spectrum (conjectured to be absent).

We discuss a novel strategy for computing the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the relativistic Dirac operator with a radially symmetric potential. The virtues of this strategy lie in the fact that it avoids completely the phenomenon of spectral pollution and it always provides two-sided estimates for the eigenvalues with explicit error bounds on both eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. We also discuss convergence rates of the method and illustrate our results with various numerical experiments.

Let $J$ be a Jacobi real symmetric matrix on $l_{2}$ with zero diagonal and non-diagonal entries of the form $\{1+p_{n}\}$. If $p_{n-1}\pm p_{n}=O(n^{-\alpha})$ with some $\alpha>2/3$, then the existence of bounded solutions of $Ju=\lambda u$ is proved for almost every $\lambda\in(-2,2)$ with the WKB-type asymptotic behavior.