Spectral gaps for periodic Schrödinger operators with hypersurface magnetic wells: Analysis near the bottom

We consider a periodic magnetic Schrödinger operator Hh, depending on the semiclassical parameter h>0, on a noncompact Riemannian manifold M such that H¹(M,R)=0 endowed with a properly discontinuous cocompact isometric action of a discrete group. We assume that there is no electric field and that the magnetic field has a periodic set of compact magnetic wells. We suppose that the magnetic field vanishes regularly on a hypersurface S. First, we prove upper and lower estimates for the bottom λ₀(Hh) of the spectrum of the operator Hh in L²(M). Then, assuming the existence of non-degenerate miniwells for the reduced spectral problem on S, we prove the existence of an arbitrarily large number of spectral gaps for the operator Hh in the region close to λ₀(Hh), as h→0. In this case, we also obtain upper estimates for the eigenvalues of the one-well problem.