English

Quantum knots

Quantum Physics 2008-04-30 v1

Abstract

It is known that besides the usual unitary mappings Ω=1/Ω\Omega = 1/\Omega^\dagger between the equivalent representations of the physical Hilbert space of Quantum Mechanics (often, Fourier transformations), the generalized non-unitary maps Ω1/Ω\Omega \neq 1/\Omega^\dagger can also help to simplify the analysis. We adapt the standard Dirac's notation and recollect the Buslaev's and Grecchi's repulsive quartic oscillator Hamiltonian as an example. Then we propose the whole new class of the models of the similar type, characterized by a complexification of the path C{\cal C} of the (obviously, not observable!) "coordinates". An exactly solvable potentialless Schr\"{o}dinger equation is finally chosen for illustration. In it, the dynamical (i.e., in our example, confining) role of the traditional potentials V(x)V(x) is shown to be taken over by the mere topologically nontrivial shape of C{\cal C}. Our construction evokes several new open questions in physics (PT{\cal PT}-symmetric wave packets at a single energy?) as well as in mathematics (a three-Hilbert-space generalized formulation of Quantum Mechanics?).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0802.1318,
  title  = {Quantum knots},
  author = {Miloslav Znojil},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.1318},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

18 pp, 3 figs

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:11:14.184Z