A geometric approach to absolutely continuous spectrum for discrete Schr\"odinger operators

We review a geometric approach to proving absolutely continuous (ac) spectrum for random and deterministic Schr\"odinger operators developed in \cite{FHS1,FHS2,FHS3,FHS4}. We study decaying potentials in one dimension and present a simplified proof of ac spectrum of the Anderson model on trees. The latter implies ac spectrum for a percolation model on trees. Finally, we introduce certain loop tree models which lead to some interesting open problems.