2010/12/31 by Paulo E G Assis, Paulo E. G. Assis · 8 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Automorphism #Class (philosophy) #Hamiltonian (control theory) #Hermitian matrix #Linear map #Matrix similarity #Nonlinear Waves and Solitons #Parity (physics) #Quadratic equation #Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics #Spectral Theory in Mathematical Physics #math-ph #math.MP #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1751-8113/44/26/265303
published in Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical 44(26), 265303 (Institute of Physics) · 25 pages, 6 figures
openalex publication_date 2011/06/01 · arxiv created 2011/06/13 · arxiv updated 2011/06/15 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
A class of non-Hermitian quadratic su (2) Hamiltonians having an anti-linear symmetry is constructed. This is achieved by analysing the possible symmetries of such systems in terms of automorphisms of the algebra. In fact, different realizations for this type of symmetry are obtained, including the natural occurrence of charge conjugation together with parity and time reversal. Once specified, the underlying anti-linear symmetry of the Hamiltonian, the former, if unbroken, leads to a purely real spectrum and the latter can be mapped to a Hermitian counterpart by, amongst other possibilities, a similarity transformation. Here, Lie-algebraic methods which were used to investigate the generalized Swanson Hamiltonian ( Assis and Fring 2009 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor . 42 015203 ) are employed to identify the class of quadratic Hamiltonians that allow for such a mapping to the Hermitian counterpart. Whereas for the linear su (2) system, every Hamiltonian of this type can be mapped to a Hermitian counterpart by a transformation which is itself an exponential of a linear combination of su (2) generators, the situation is more complicated for quadratic Hamiltonians. Therefore, the possibility of more elaborate similarity transformations, including quadratic exponents, is also explored in detail. The existence of finite-dimensional representations for the su (2) Hamiltonian, as opposed to the su (1, 1) studied before, allows for comparison with explicit diagonalization results for finite matrices. Finally, the similarity transformations constructed are compared with the analogue of Swanson's method for exact diagonalization of the problem, establishing a simple relation between both approaches.