Stability of Spectral Types of Quasi-Periodic Schrödinger Operators With Respect to Perturbations by Decaying Potentials

Abstract: We consider perturbations of quasi-periodic Schr\"odinger operators on the integer lattice with analytic sampling functions by decaying potentials and seek decay conditions under which various spectral properties are preserved. In the (almost) reducibility regime we prove that for perturbations with finite first moment, the essential spectrum remains purely absolutely continuous and the newly created discrete spectrum must be finite in each gap of the unperturbed spectrum. We also prove that for fixed phase, Anderson localization occurring for almost all frequencies in the regime of positive Lyapunov exponents is preserved under exponentially decaying perturbations.