The Jordan-curve conjecture for banded Toeplitz symbols

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Let fmf_m be the symbol function defined by the paper, and let fm−1(λ)f_m^{-1}(\lambda) denote the preimage of the symbol function, namely the roots of fm(z)−λ=0f_m(z)-\lambda=0. Let Tn(fm)\mathbf{T}_n(f_m) be the corresponding n×nn\times n banded Toeplitz matrix, and let σ(Tn(fm))\sigma(\mathbf{T}_n(f_m)) denote its spectrum.

Jordan-curve conjecture. The following statements are equivalent:

  1. There exists a Jordan curve parametrised by the complex band structure.
  2. lim⁡n→∞σ(Tn(fm))⊂R\displaystyle \lim_{n\to\infty}\sigma\bigl(\mathbf{T}_n(f_m)\bigr)\subset\mathbb{R}.

The conjecture is motivated by an earlier result that was presented as a theorem under weaker assumptions, but whose proof was later found to be erroneous. The equivalence is therefore stated as a conjecture and remains open according to the supplied status information.

References

Primary source

Yannick de Bruijn and Erik Orvehed Hiltunen, “Mathematical Foundation for the Generalised Brillouin zone of m-banded Toeplitz operators”, arXiv:2602.09734 (2026).

Additional references

4 papers in this index state this conjecture (2009–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:1812.06437, arXiv:1203.2741, arXiv:0906.1048.

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