We use tools from free probability to study the spectra of Hermitian operators on infinite graphs. Special attention is devoted to universal covering trees of finite graphs. For operators on these graphs, we derive a new variational formula for the spectral radius and provide new proofs of results due to Sunada and Aomoto using free probability.

With the goal of extending the applicability of free probability techniques beyond universal covering trees, we introduce a new combinatorial product operation on graphs and show that, in the noncommutative probability context, it corresponds to the notion of freeness with amalgamation. We show that Cayley graphs of amalgamated free products of groups, as well as universal covering trees, can be constructed using our graph product.

We consider continuous cocycles arising from CMV and Jacobi matrices. Assuming that the Verblunsky and Jacobi coefficients arise from generalized skew-shifts, we prove that uniform hyperbolicity of the associated cocycles is $C^0$ -dense. This implies that the associated CMV and Jacobi matrices have a Cantor spectrum for a generic continuous sampling map.

We consider a class of Jacobi matrices with periodically modulated diagonal in a critical hyperbolic (‘double root’) situation. For the model with ‘non-smooth’ matrix entries we obtain the asymptotics of generalized eigenvectors and analyse the spectrum. In addition, we reformulate a very helpful theorem from a paper by Janas and Moszynski in its full generality in order to serve the needs of our method.

We study the spectrum of periodic Jacobi matrices. We concentrate on the case of slowly oscillating diagonal terms and study the behaviour of the zeros of the associated orthogonal polynomials in the spectral gap. We find precise estimates for the distance from single eigenvalues of truncated matrices in the spectral gap to the diagonal entries of the matrix. We include a brief numerical example to show the exactness of our estimates.

In this paper, we use the theorem of Burchnall and Shaundy to give the capacity of the spectrum $\sigma(A)$ of a periodic tridiagonal and symmetric matrix. A special family of Chebyshev polynomials of $\sigma(A)$ is also given. In addition, the inverse problem is considered: given a finite union $E$ of closed intervals, we study the conditions for a Jacobi matrix $A$ to exist satisfying $\sigma(A)=E$. We relate this question to Carathéodory theorems on conformal mappings.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 31B15; 30C20; 39A70

We are interested in obtaining bounds for the spectrum of the infinite Jacobi matrix of a birth and death process or of any process (with nearest-neighbour interactions) defined by a similar Jacobi matrix.

To this aim we use some results of Stieltjes theory for S-fractions, after reviewing them. We prove a general theorem giving a lower bound of the spectrum. The theorem also gives sufficient conditions for the spectrum to be discrete.

The expression for the lower bound is then worked out explicitly for several, fairly general, classes of birth and death processes. A conjecture about the asymptotic behavior of a special class of birth and death processes is presented.