English

WKB Analysis of PT-Symmetric Sturm-Liouville problems. II

High Energy Physics - Theory 2013-05-30 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

In a previous paper it was shown that a one-turning-point WKB approximation gives an accurate picture of the spectrum of certain non-Hermitian PT-symmetric Hamiltonians on a finite interval with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Potentials to which this analysis applies include the linear potential V=igxV=igx and the sinusoidal potential V=igsin(αx)V=ig\sin(\alpha x). However, the one-turning-point analysis fails to give the full structure of the spectrum for the cubic potential V=igx3V=igx^3, and in particular it fails to reproduce the critical points at which two real eigenvalues merge and become a complex-conjugate pair. The present paper extends the method to cases where the WKB path goes through a {\it pair} of turning points. The extended method gives an extremely accurate approximation to the spectrum of V=igx3V=igx^3, and more generally it works for potentials of the form V=igx2N+1V=igx^{2N+1}. When applied to potentials with half-integral powers of xx, the method again works well for one sign of the coupling, namely that for which the turning points lie on the first sheet in the lower-half plane.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1203.5702,
  title  = {WKB Analysis of PT-Symmetric Sturm-Liouville problems. II},
  author = {Carl M. Bender and Hugh F. Jones},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.5702},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

11 pages, 10 figures