Abstract (eng)
This thesis is concerned with questions regarding the spectral theory of the Dolbeault Laplacian with d-bar-Neumann boundary conditions, considered as a self-adjoint operator acting on the space of square integrable differential forms on a Hermitian manifold. The corresponding boundary value problem, called the d-bar-Neumann problem, arises naturally in the investigation of the (inhomogeneous) Cauchy--Riemann equations through the methods of (L^2-) Hodge theory.
In this way, spectral properties of the Dolbeault Laplacian give information on the solvability of the Cauchy--Riemann equations and, by extension, on the construction of holomorphic functions (or, more generally, sections of holomorphic vector bundles) with prescribed properties. The Dolbeault Laplacian is the Laplacian of the elliptic Dolbeault complex, which generalizes the Wirtinger derivative of single variable complex analysis, and its L^2 realization with d-bar-Neumann boundary conditions corresponds to the weak extension of the Dolbeault complex. Therefore, we also discuss in detail aspects of the spectral theory of self-adjoint extensions of elliptic differential operators in a general setting. For a lot of the results, we consider the d-bar-Neumann problem on Kähler manifolds with some bounded geometry, in order to show that previously known theorems in the setting of (domains in) C^n continue to hold more generally. One of these is that the discreteness of spectrum of the Dolbeault Laplacian \enquote{percolates} up the Dolbeault complex, provided some boundary and curvature assumptions are made. Therefore, necessary conditions for the discreteness of spectrum can be studied on the top end of the Dolbeault complex, where the Laplacian reduces to a somewhat more tractable operator, which we analyze with methods from Schrödinger operator theory. In the last chapter, we consider the d-bar-Neumann problem for the product of two Hermitian manifolds, and describe the (essential) spectrum of the Laplacian in terms of the spectra of the Laplacians on the individual factors.