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

Title: Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with unitary and antiunitary symmetries

Journal Article · · Annals of Physics (New York)

We analyse several non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with antiunitary symmetry from the point of view of their point-group symmetry. It enables us to predict the degeneracy of the energy levels and to reduce the dimension of the matrices necessary for the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian in a given basis set. We can also classify the solutions according to the irreducible representations of the point group and thus analyse their properties separately. One of the main results of this paper is that some PT-symmetric Hamiltonians with point-group symmetry C{sub 2v} exhibit complex eigenvalues for all values of a potential parameter. In such cases the PT phase transition takes place at the trivial Hermitian limit which suggests that the phenomenon is not robust. Point-group symmetry enables us to explain such anomalous behaviour and to choose a suitable antiunitary operator for the PT symmetry. -- Highlights: •PT-symmetric Hamiltonians exhibit real eigenvalues when PT symmetry is unbroken. •PT-symmetric multidimensional oscillators appear to show PT phase transitions. •This transition was conjectured to be a high-energy phenomenon. •We show that point group symmetry is useful for predicting broken PT symmetry in multidimensional oscillators. •PT-symmetric oscillators with C{sub 2v} symmetry exhibit phase transitions at the trivial Hermitian limit.

OSTI ID:
22224305
Journal Information:
Annals of Physics (New York), Vol. 342; Other Information: Copyright (c) 2014 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-4916
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Is space-time symmetry a suitable generalization of parity-time symmetry?
Journal Article · Sat Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2014 · Annals of Physics (New York) · OSTI ID:22224305

Ordinary versus PT-symmetric Φ³ quantum field theory
Journal Article · Mon Apr 02 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Physical Review. D, Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology · OSTI ID:22224305

Symmetric quadratic Hamiltonians with pseudo-Hermitian matrix representation
Journal Article · Wed Jun 15 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Annals of Physics · OSTI ID:22224305