This review is an extended version of my mini course at the États de la recherche: Opérateurs de Schrödinger aléatoires at the Université Paris 13 in June 2002, a summer school organized by Frédéric Klopp. These lecture notes try to give some of the basics of random Schrödinger operators. They are meant for nonspecialists and require only minor previous knowledge about functional analysis and probability theory. Nevertheless this survey includes complete proofs of Lifshitz tails and Anderson localization. Copyright by the author. Copying for academic purposes is permitted.

Abstract. We survey some aspects of the theory of the integrated density of states (IDS) of random Schrödinger operators. The first part motivates the problem and introduces the relevant models as well as quantities of interest. The proof of the existence of this interesting quantity, the IDS, is discussed in the second section. One central topic of this survey is the asymptotic behavior of the integrated density of states at the boundary of the spectrum. In particular, we are interested in Lifshitz tails and the occurrence of a classical and a quantum regime. In the last section we discuss regularity properties of the IDS. Our emphasis is on the discussion of fundamental problems and central ideas to handle them. Finally, we discuss further developments and problems of current

We survey recent results on spectral properties of random Schrodinger operators. The focus is set on the integrated density of states (IDS).

We prove quantum dynamical lower bounds for one-dimensional continuum Schrödinger operators that possess critical energies for which there is slow growth of transfer matrix norms and a large class of compactly supported initial states. This general result is applied to a number of models, including the Bernoulli-Anderson model with a constant single-site potential.

Consider a one-dimensional Schrodinger operator with potential V given as follows: Fix a single site potential f which is supported in an interval of length less than 1.

Recent results on localization, both exponential and dynamical, for various models of one-dimensional, continuum, random Schrödinger operators are reviewed. This includes Anderson models with indefinite single site potentials, the Bernoulli-Anderson model, the Poisson model, and the random displacement model. Among the tools which are used to analyse these models are generalized spectral averaging techniques and results from inverse spectral and scattering theory. A discussion of open problems is included.

We study a unitary version of the one-dimensional Anderson model, given by a five diagonal deterministic unitary operator multiplicatively perturbed by a random phase matrix. We fully characterize positivity and vanishing of the Lyapunov exponent for this model throughout the spectrum and for arbitrary distributions of the random phases. This includes Bernoulli distributions, where in certain cases a finite number of critical spectral values, with vanishing Lyapunov exponent, exists. We establish similar results for a unitary version of the random dimer model.

I consider random Schrödinger operators with exponentially decaying single site potential, which is allowed to change sign. For this model, I prove Anderson localization both in the sense of exponentially decaying eigenfunctions and dynamical localization. Furthermore, the results imply a Wegner-type estimate strong enough to use in classical forms of multi-scale analysis.

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Abstract. We study localization properties for a class of one-dimensional, matrix-valued, continuous, random Schrödinger operators, acting on L 2 (R) ⊗ C N, for arbitrary N ≥ 1. We prove that, under suitable assumptions on the Fürstenberg group of these operators, valid on an interval I ⊂ R, they exhibit localization properties on I, both in the spectral and dynamical sense. After looking at the regularity properties of the Lyapunov exponents and of the integrated density of states, we prove a Wegner estimate and apply a multiscale analysis scheme to prove localization for these operators. We also study an example in this class of operators, for which we can prove the required assumptions on the Fürstenberg group. This group being the one generated by the transfer matrices, we can use, to prove these assumptions, an algebraic result on generating dense Lie subgroups in semisimple real connected Lie groups, due to Breuillard and Gelander. The algebraic methods used here allow us to handle with singular distributions of the random parameters.