Computing Spectra without Solving Eigenvalue Problems

The approximation of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of an elliptic operator is a key computational task in many areas of applied mathematics and computational physics. An important case, especially in quantum physics, is the computation of the spectrum of a Schrodinger operator with a disordered potential. Unlike plane waves or Bloch waves that arise as Schrodinger eigenfunctions for periodic and other ordered potentials, for many forms of disordered potentials the eigenfunctions remain essentially localized in a very small subset of the initial domain. A celebrated example is Anderson localization, for which, in a continuous version, the potential is a piecewise constant function on a uniform grid whose values are sampled independently from a uniform random distribution. We present here a new method for approximating the eigenvalues and the subregions which support such localized eigenfunctions. This approach is based on the recent theoretical tools of the localization landscape and effective potenti...