English

Wave packet evolution in non-Hermitian quantum systems

Quantum Physics 2011-07-04 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

The quantum evolution of the Wigner function for Gaussian wave packets generated by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian is investigated. In the semiclassical limit 0\hbar\to 0 this yields the non-Hermitian analog of the Ehrenfest theorem for the dynamics of observable expectation values. The lack of Hermiticity reveals the importance of the complex structure on the classical phase space: The resulting equations of motion are coupled to an equation of motion for the phase space metric---a phenomenon having no analog in Hermitian theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1010.4557,
  title  = {Wave packet evolution in non-Hermitian quantum systems},
  author = {Eva-Maria Graefe and Roman Schubert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.4557},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

Example added, references updated, 4 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:32:26.363Z