The spectrum of an elliptic operator of second order

Under minimal requirements on the coefficients and the boundary of the domain it is proved that the spectrum of the first boundary-value problem for an elliptic operator of second order always lies in the half-plane Re , where is the leading eigenvalue to which there corresponds a nonnegative eigenfunction. On the line Re = , there are no other points of the spectrum.Translated from Matematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 351–358, September, 1976.