Essential spectrum of non-self-adjoint singular matrix differential operators

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to study the essential spectrum of non-self-adjoint singular matrix differential operators in the Hilbert space $L^2(\mathbb{R})\oplus L^2(\mathbb{R})$ induced by matrix differential expressions of the form \begin{align}\label{abstract:mdo} \left(\begin{array}{cc} \tau_{11}(\,\cdot\,,D) & \tau_{12}(\,\cdot\,,D)\[3.5ex] \tau_{21}(\,\cdot\,,D) & \tau_{22}(\,\cdot\,,D) \end{array}\right), \end{align} where $\tau_{11}$, $\tau_{12}$, $\tau_{21}$, $\tau_{22}$ are respectively $m$-th, $n$-th, $k$-th and 0 order ordinary differential expressions with $m=n+k$ being even. Under suitable assumptions on their coefficients, we establish an analytic description of the essential spectrum. It turns out that the points of the essential spectrum either have a local origin, which can be traced to points where the ellipticity in the sense of Douglis and Nirenberg breaks down, or they are caused by singularity at infinity.