On the self-adjoint differential operator with the periodic matrix coefficients

Abstract: In this paper we consider the spectrum of the self-adjoint differential operator L generated by the differential expression of order n with the m by m periodic matrix coefficients, where n and m are respectively odd and even integers and n>1. We prove that the number of gaps in the spectrum of L is finite and find explicit estimation in term of coefficients for the number of the gaps. Moreover, we find a condition on the norms of the coefficients for which the spectrum is real axis. Besides we investigate the bands of the spectrum and prove that most of the real axis is overlapped by m bands.