Elliptic operators with unbounded diffusion coefficients in Lp spaces

In this paper we prove that, under suitable assumptions on {\alpha} > 0, the operator L = (1 + |x|{\alpha})\Delta admits realizations generating contraction or analytic semigroups in Lp (RN). For some values of {\alpha}, we also explicitly characterize the domain of L. Finally, some informations about the location and composition of the spectrum are given.