The essential self-adjointness of generalized Schrödinger operators

A necessary and sufficient condition is given for the generalized Schrödinger operator $\text{A = ?(}\text{1}\text{2?}\text{) ∑}{}_{\mathrm{i\; =\; 1}}{}^{\mathrm{n}}\text{D}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{(?D}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{)}$ to be essentially self-adjoint in $\text{L}{}^2\text{(Ω;? dx)}$, under general assumptions on ? and for arbitrary domains Ω in $\text{R}$ⁿ. In particular, if ? is strictly positive and locally Lipschitz continuous on $\text{Ω = R}{}^{\mathrm{n}}$, then A is essentially. self-adjoint. Examples of non-essential self-adjointness and a complete discussion of the one-dimensional case are also given. These results have applications to the problem of the essential self-adjointness of quantum Hamiltonians and to the uniqueness problem of Markov processes.