Relative oscillation theory for Dirac operators

We develop relative oscillation theory for one-dimensional Dirac operators which, rather than measuring the spectrum of one single operator, measures the difference between the spectra of two different operators. This is done by replacing zeros of solutions of one operator by weighted zeros of Wronskians of solutions of two different operators. In particular, we show that a Sturm-type comparison theorem still holds in this situation and demonstrate how this can be used to investigate the number of eigenvalues in essential spectral gaps. Furthermore, the connection with Krein's spectral shift function is established. As an application we extend a result by K.M. Schmidt on the finiteness/infiniteness of the number of eigenvalues in essential spectral gaps of perturbed periodic Dirac operators.