We study the effect of algebraically localized impurities on striped phases in one spatial dimension. We therefore develop a functional-analytic framework that allows us to cast the perturbation problem as a regular Fredholm problem despite the presence of the essential spectrum, caused by the soft translational mode. Our results establish the selection of jumps in wavenumber and phase, depending on the location of the impurity and the average wavenumber in the system. We also show that, for select locations, the jump in the wavenumber vanishes.

We extend the Atiyah, Patodi, and Singer index theorem for first-order differential operators from the context of manifolds with cylindrical ends to manifolds with periodic ends. This theorem provides a natural complement to Taubes’ Fredholm theory for general end-periodic operators. Our index theorem is expressed in terms of a new periodic eta-invariant that equals the Atiyah–Patodi–Singer eta-invariant in the cylindrical setting. We apply this periodic eta-invariant to the study of moduli spaces of Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature.

For a large class of subsets $\varOmega\subset\mathbb{R}^{N}$ (including unbounded domains), we discuss the Fredholm and properness properties of second-order quasilinear elliptic operators viewed as mappings from $W^{2,p}(\varOmega;\mathbb{R}^{m})$ to $L^{p}(\varOmega;\mathbb{R}^{m})$ with $N\ltp\lt\infty$ and $m\geq1$. These operators arise in the study of elliptic systems of $m$ equations on $\varOmega$. A study in the case of a single equation ($m=1$) on $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ was carried out by Rabier and Stuart.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 35J45; 35J60. Secondary 47A53; 47F05

In this paper it is proved that the index of a Fredholm operator between $p$-adic Banach spaces is preserved under compact perturbations. A case of special interest is provided when the ground field is nonspherically complete. In this case the classical techniques are no longer valid and the relation between the kernels of a Fredholm operator and that of a small compact perturbation turn out to be in general much richer than in the complex context.

A composition operator CT on L2(X, Σ,m) is a bounded linear transformation induced by a mapping T : X → X via CTf = f∘ T.

If m has no atoms then the co-rank of CT (i.e., dim is either zero or infinite. As a corollary, when m has no atoms, CT is a Fredholm operator iff it is invertible.