Schrödinger operators with delta and delta'-potentials supported on hypersurfaces

Abstract: Self-adjoint Schr\"odinger operators with $\delta$ and $\delta'$-potentials supported on a smooth compact hypersurface are defined explicitly via boundary conditions. The spectral properties of these operators are investigated, regularity results on the functions in their domains are obtained, and analogues of the Birman--Schwinger principle and a variant of Krein's formula are shown. Furthermore, Schatten--von Neumann type estimates for the differences of the powers of the resolvents of the Schr\"odinger operators with $\delta$ and $\delta'$-potentials, and the Schr\"odinger operator without a singular interaction are proved. An immediate consequence of these estimates is the existence and completeness of the wave operators of the corresponding scattering systems, as well as the unitary equivalence of the absolutely continuous parts of the singularly perturbed and unperturbed Schr\"odinger operators. In the proofs of our main theorems we make use of abstract methods from extension theory of symmetric operators, some algebraic considerations and results on elliptic regularity.