Spectra of Schreier graphs of Grigorchuk's group and Schroedinger operators with aperiodic order

Abstract

We study spectral properties of the Laplacians on Schreier graphs arising from Grigorchuk's group acting on the boundary of the infinite binary tree. We establish a connection between the action of $G$ on its space of Schreier graphs and a subshift associated to a non-primitive substitution and relate the Laplacians on the Schreier graphs to discrete Schroedinger operators with aperiodic order. We use this relation to prove that the spectrum of the anisotropic Laplacians is a Cantor set of Lebesgue measure zero. We also use it to show absence of eigenvalues both almost-surely and for certain specific graphs. The methods developed here apply to a large class of examples.

Article to appear in Math. Ann.; part of the study of combinatorics of the subshift removed and included in arXiv:1711.10342; apart from this only minor modifications