Absolute continuity and spectral concentration for slowly decaying potentials

We consider the spectral function ϱ(μ) (μ⩾0) for the Sturm-Liouville equation y″ + (λ −qq)y=0 on [0,∞) with the boundary condition y(0)=0 and where q has slow decay O(x−a (a > 0) as x → ∞. We develop our previous methods of locating spectral concentration for q with rapid exponential decay (this Journal 81 (1997) 333–348) to deal with the new theoretical and computational complexities which arise for slow decay.