Cantor spectrum for CMV matrices with almost periodic Verblunsky coefficients

Abstract

We consider extended CMV matrices with analytic quasi-periodic Verblunsky coefficients with Diophantine frequency vector in the perturbatively small coupling constant regime and prove the analyticity of the tongue boundaries. As a consequence we establish that, generically, all gaps of the spectrum that are allowed by the Gap Labeling Theorem are open and hence the spectrum is a Cantor set. We also prove these results for a related class of almost periodic Verblunsky coefficients and present an application to suitable quantum walk models on the integer lattice.