On essential spectra of singular linear Hamiltonian systems

The paper is concerned with essential spectra of singular linear Hamiltonian systems of arbitrary order with arbitrary equal defect indices. Several sufficient conditions for the essential spectral points are given in terms of the number of linearly independent square integrable solutions of the corresponding Hamiltonian system, and a sufficient and necessary condition for the essential spectral points is obtained for Hamiltonian systems of even-order with one singular endpoint. An advantage of these results is that one can determine the essential spectral points of Hamiltonian systems by the information of solutions obtained by numerous tools available in the fundamental theory of differential equations. In addition, two illustrative examples are provided to show how to get some information about the essential spectrum by our results. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.