The structurally stable linear systems on the half-line are those with exponential dichotomies

Let A be a selft-adjoint operator on the Hilbert space L²Ω, ?) = {u ε L_loc²(Ω)|∫_Ω|² ?(x)dx < + ∞} defined by means of a closed, semibounded, sesquilinear form a(·, ·). We obtain a necessary and sufficuents condition for the spectrum of A to be discrete. We apply this result to a Sturm-Liouville problem for an elliptic operator with discontinuous coefficients defined on an unbounded domain and to the study of the spectrum of a Hamiltonian defined by a pseudodifferential operator.