Width of shape resonances for non globally analytic potentials

Abstract

We consider the semiclassical Schrödinger operator with a well in an island potential, on which we assume smoothness only, except near infinity. We give the asymptotic expansion of the imaginary part of the shape resonance at the bottom of the well. This is a generalization of the result by Helffer and Sjöstrand [HeSj1] in the globally analytic case. We use an almost-analytic extension in order to continue the WKB solution coming from the well beyond the caustic set, and, for the justification of the accuracy of this approximation, we develop some refined microlocal arguments in h-dependent small regions.