skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Spectral Singularities of Complex Scattering Potentials and Infinite Reflection and Transmission Coefficients at Real Energies

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
 [1]
  1. Department of Mathematics, Koc University, Sariyer 34450, Istanbul (Turkey)

Spectral singularities are spectral points that spoil the completeness of the eigenfunctions of certain non-Hermitian Hamiltonian operators. We identify spectral singularities of complex scattering potentials with the real energies at which the reflection and transmission coefficients tend to infinity, i.e., they correspond to resonances having a zero width. We show that a waveguide modeled using such a potential operates like a resonator at the frequencies of spectral singularities. As a concrete example, we explore the spectral singularities of an imaginary PT-symmetric barrier potential and demonstrate the above resonance phenomenon for a certain electromagnetic waveguide.

OSTI ID:
21319476
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 102, Issue 22; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.220402; (c) 2009 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Spectral singularities and Bragg scattering in complex crystals
Journal Article · Mon Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2010 · Physical Review. A · OSTI ID:21319476

Application of pseudo-Hermitian quantum mechanics to a PT-symmetric Hamiltonian with a continuum of scattering states
Journal Article · Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2005 · Journal of Mathematical Physics · OSTI ID:21319476

Spectrally determined singularities in a potential
Journal Article · Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 EST 1995 · Communications in Partial Differential Equations · OSTI ID:21319476