English

What breaks parity-time-symmetry? -- pseudo-Hermiticity and resonance between positive- and negative-action modes

Quantum Physics 2018-03-06 v3 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

It is generally believed that Parity-Time (PT)-symmetry breaking occurs when eigenvalues or both eigenvalues and eigenvectors coincide. However, we show that this well-accepted picture of PT-symmetry breaking is incorrect. Instead, we demonstrate that the physical mechanism of PT-symmetry breaking is the resonance between positive- and negative-action modes. It is proved that PT-symmetry breaking occurs when and only when this resonance condition is satisfied, and this mechanism applies to all known PT-symmetry breakings observed in different branches of physics. The result is achieved by proving a remarkable fact that in finite dimensions, a PT-symmetric Hamiltonian is necessarily pseudo-Hermitian, regardless whether it is diagonalizable or not.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1801.01676,
  title  = {What breaks parity-time-symmetry? -- pseudo-Hermiticity and resonance between positive- and negative-action modes},
  author = {Ruili Zhang and Hong Qin and Jianyuan Xiao and Jian Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.01676},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

15 pages, 3 figures