Spectral asymptotics of periodic elliptic operators

We demonstrate that the structure of complex second-order strongly elliptic operators H on with coefficients invariant under translation by can be analyzed through decomposition in terms of versions , , of H with z-periodic boundary conditions acting on where . If the s emigroup S generated by H has a H?lder continuous integral kernel satisfying Gaussian bounds then the semigroups generated by the have kernels with similar properties and extends to a function on which is analytic with respect to the trace norm. The sequence of semigroups obtained by rescaling the coefficients of by converges in trace norm to the semigroup generated by the homogenization of . These convergence properties allow asymptotic analysis of the spectrum of H. Received September 1, 1998; in final form January 14, 1999