For Jacobi matrices on the discrete half line with slowly oscillating potentials the absolutely continuous and singular spectrum is located. The results, which can be extended to perturbed periodic potentials, show that separated regions of purely absolutely continuous resp. purely singular spectrum appear. The main tools in the proof of absolute continuity are the method of subordinacy and an abstract result on the iterated diagonalization of products of 2×2-matrices, which is applied to transfer matrices. The singular spectrum is found by using a result of Simon and Spancer. © 1994 Springer-Verlag.
