Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps, abstract Weyl–Titchmarsh M-functions, and a generalized index of unbounded meromorphic operator-valued functions

Abstract

We introduce a generalized index for certain meromorphic, unbounded, operator-valued functions. The class of functions is chosen such that energy parameter dependent Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps associated to uniformly elliptic partial differential operators, particularly, non-self-adjoint Schrödinger operators, on bounded Lipschitz domains, and abstract operator-valued Weyl–Titchmarsh M-functions and Donoghue-type M-functions corresponding to closed extensions of symmetric operators belong to it. The principal purpose of this paper is to prove index formulas that relate the difference of the algebraic multiplicities of the discrete eigenvalues of Robin realizations of non-self-adjoint Schrödinger operators, and more abstract pairs of closed operators in Hilbert spaces with the generalized index of the corresponding energy dependent Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps and abstract Weyl–Titchmarsh M-functions, respectively.