Directional Ballistic Transport for Partially Periodic Schrödinger Operators

Abstract: We study the transport properties of Schr\"{o}dinger operators on $\mathbb{R}^d$ and $\mathbb{Z}^d$ with potentials that are periodic in some directions and compactly supported in the others. Such systems are known to produce "surface states" that are confined near the support of the potential. We show that, under very mild assumptions, a class of surface states exhibits what we describe as directional ballistic transport, consisting of a strong form of ballistic transport in the periodic directions and its absence in the other directions. Furthermore, on $\mathbb{Z}^2$, we show that a dense set of surface states exhibit directional ballistic transport. In appendices, we generalize Simon's classic result on the absence of ballistic transport for pure point states [36], and prove a folklore theorem on ballistic transport for scattering states. In particular, this final result allows for a proof of ballistic transport for a dense set subset of $\ell^2(\mathbb{Z}^2)$ for periodic strip models.