Scattering theory for the Laplacian on manifolds with bounded curvature

In this paper we study the behaviour of the continuous spectrum of the Laplacian on a complete Riemannian manifold of bounded curvature under perturbations of the metric. The perturbations that we consider are such that its covariant derivatives up to some order decay with some rate in the geodesic distance from a fixed point. Especially we impose no conditions on the injectivity radius. One of the main results are conditions on the rate of decay, depending on geometric properties of the underlying manifold, that guarantee the existence and completeness of the wave operators. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved