Search

Non-Hermitian theories that are explicitly PT-symmetric and/or quasi/pseudo-Hermitian have become the subject of an active research field for the last two decades. They constitute well-defined classical and quantum theories possessing real eigenvalue spectra and unitary time-evolution. Since the underlying concepts are generic, the general principles have been applied in essentially all areas of physics and have unravelled new theoretical insights and experimental realisations especially in optical applications. Beginning in 2003 a regular conference series entitled “Pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians in Quantum Physics” has taken place annually to bring together researchers in order to take stock of the current state of the field and to assist participants to collaborate in developing new ideas. Unfortunately, the 20th meeting in this series, which was scheduled originally for 2020 to be held in Los Alamos had to be postponed to 2022 due to the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. To bridge the gap and to provide a platform to allow for a continued exchange of ideas and novelties a virtual seminar series via Zoom with a dedicated website (https://vphhqp.com) was organised by Andreas Fring and Francisco Correa. With currently more than 50 seminars scheduled and well over 200 registered participants, the series is still ongoing. The main motivation behind this special issue has been to allow speakers and participants in this series to present their results in a coherent written in the form of mini-reviews of certain subtopics in the field and new research results. We hope that this special issue will become a valuable reference and inspiration for a broad scientific community, experts and newcomers alike, working in mathematical and theoretical physics. Carl Bender, Department of Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA; cmb@wuphys. wustl. edu Francisco Correa, Institute de e Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas , Universidad Austral de Chile Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile; francisco.correa@uach.cl Andreas Fring, Department of Mathematics, City, University of London, Northampton Square London EC1V 0HB, UK; a.fring@city.ac.uk

We propose time-dependent Darboux (supersymmetric) transformations that provide a scheme for the calculation of explicitly time-dependent solvable non-Hermitian partner Hamiltonians. Together with two Hermitian Hamilitonians the latter form a quadruple of Hamiltonians that are related by two time-dependent Dyson equations and two intertwining relations in form of a commutative diagram. Our construction is extended to the entire hierarchy of Hamiltonians obtained from time dependent Darboux-Crum transformations. As an alternative approach we also discuss the intertwining relations for Lewis-Riesenfeld invariants for Hermitian as well as non-Hermitian Hamiltonians that reduce the time-dependent equations to auxiliary eigenvalue equations. The working of our proposals is discussed for a hierarchy of explicitly time-dependent rational, hyperbolic, Airy function and nonlocal potentials., 22 pages, 4 figures

We apply a recently introduced reduction procedure based on the embedding of non-crystallographic Coxeter groups into crystallographic ones to Calogero-Moser systems. For rational potentials the familiar generalized Calogero Hamiltonian is recovered. For the Hamiltonians of trigonometric, hyperbolic and elliptic type, we obtain novel integrable dynamical systems with a second potential term which is rescaled by the golden ratio. We explicitly show for the simplest of these non-crystallographic models how the corresponding classical equations of motion can be derived from a Lie algebraic Lax pair based on the larger, crystallographic Coxeter group., 21 pages

We analyse the expression for the conductance of a quantum wire which is decribed by an integrable quantum field theory. In the high temperature regime we derive a simple formula for the filling fraction. This expression involves only the inverse of a matrix which contains the information of the asymptotic phases of the scattering matrix and the solutions of the constant thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations. Evaluating these expressions for minimal affine Toda field theory we recover several sequences of rational numbers, which are multiples of the famous Jain sequence for the filling fraction occurring in the context of the fractional quantum Hall effect. For instance we obtain $\nu= 4 m/(2m +1)$ for $A_{4m-1}$-minimal affine Toda field theory. The matrices involved have in general non-rational entries and are not part of previous classification schemes based on integral lattices., Comment: 9 pages Latex, version to appear in Journal of Physics A

We propose a renormalization group scaling function which is constructed from q-deformed fermionic versions of Virasoro characters. By comparison with alternative methods, which take their starting point in the massive theories, we demonstrate that these new functions contain qualitatively the same information. We show that these functions allow for RG-flows not only amongst members of a particular series of conformal field theories, but also between different series such as N=0,1,2 supersymmetric conformal field theories. We provide a detailed analysis of how Weyl characters may be utilized in order to solve various recurrence relations emerging at the fixed points of these flows. The q-deformed Virasoro characters allow furthermore for the construction of particle spectra, which involve unstable pseudo-particles., 31 pages of Latex, 5 figures

This is a call for contributions to a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical dedicated to the subject of Pseudo Hermitian Hamiltonians in Quantum Physics as featured in the conference '6th International Workshop on Pseudo Hermitian Hamiltonians in Quantum Physics', City University London, UK, July 16--18 2007 (http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~fring/PT/). Invited speakers at that meeting as well as other researchers working in the field are invited to submit a research paper to this issue. The Editorial Board has invited Andreas Fring, Hugh F Jones and Miloslav Znojil to serve as Guest Editors for the special issue. Their criteria for acceptance of contributions are as follows: •The subject of the paper should relate to the subject of the workshop ((see list of topics in the website of the conference http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~fring/PT/). •Contributions will be refereed and processed according to the usual procedure of the journal. •Conference papers may be based on already published work but should either contain significant additional new results and/or insights or give a survey of the present state of the art, a critical assessment of the present understanding of a topic, and a discussion of open problems. •Papers submitted by non-participants should be original and contain substantial new results. The guidelines for the preparation of contributions are the following: •The DEADLINE for submission of contributions is 16 November 2007. This deadline will allow the special issue to appear in June 2008. •There is a nominal page limit of 16 printed pages (approximately 9600 words) per contribution. For papers exceeding this limit, the Guest Editors reserve the right to request a reduction in length. Further advice on publishing your work in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical may be found at www.iop.org/Journals/jphysa. •Contributions to the special issue should, if possible, be submitted electronically by web upload at www.iop.org/Journals/jphysa or by e-mail to jphysa@iop.org, quoting 'JPhysA Special Issue—PHHQP07'. Submissions should ideally be in standard LaTeX form. Please see the website for further information on electronic submissions. •Authors unable to submit electronically may send hard copy contributions to: Publishing Administrators, Journal of Physics A, Institute of Physics Publishing, Dirac House, Temple Back, Bristol BS1 6BE, UK, enclosing the electronic code on CD if available and quoting 'JPhysA Special Issue---PHHQP07'. All contributions should be accompanied by a read-me file or covering letter giving the postal and e-mail addresses for correspondence. The Publishing Office should be notified of any subsequent change of address. •This special issue will be published in the paper and online version of the journal. Each participant at the workshop and the corresponding author of each contribution will receive a complimentary copy of the issue.

This is a call for contributions to a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical dedicated to the subject of the conference `IDAQUIS 2007', 23–27 July 2007 (http://www.ualg.pt/idaquis/welcome.html). Invited speakers and participants at that meeting and other researchers working in the field are invited to submit a research paper to this issue. The Editorial Board has invited Andreas Fring, Petr Kulish, Nenad Manojlovic, Zoltan Nagy, Joana Nunes da Costa and Henning Samtleben to serve as Guest Editors for the special issue. Their criteria for acceptance of contributions are as follows: •The subject of the paper should relate to the subject of the workshop (see the website of the conference http://www.ualg.pt/idaquis/welcome.html). •Contributions will be refereed and processed according to the usual procedure of the journal. •Conference papers may be based on already published work but should either contain significant additional new results and/or insights or give a survey of the present state of the art, a critical assessment of the present understanding of a topic, and a discussion of open problems. •Papers submitted by non-participants should be original and contain substantial new results. The guidelines for the preparation of contributions are the following: •The DEADLINE for submission of contributions is 31 October 2007. This deadline will allow the special issue to appear in June 2008. •There is a nominal page limit of 30 printed pages per contribution for invited speakers and 10 printed pages for all other contributors. For papers exceeding this limit, the Guest Editors reserve the right to request a reduction in length. •Further advice on publishing your work in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical may be found at www.iop.org/Journals/jphysa. •Contributions to the special issue should, if possible, be submitted electronically by web upload at www.iop.org/Journals/jphysa or by e-mail to jphysa@iop.org, quoting `JPhysA Special Issue—IDAQUIS'. Submissions should ideally be in standard LaTeX form. Please see the website for further information on electronic submissions. All contributions should be accompanied by a read-me file or covering letter giving the postal and e-mail addresses for correspondence. The Publishing Office should be notified of any subsequent change of address. •This special issue will be published in the paper and online version of the journal. Each participant at the workshop and the corresponding author of each contribution will receive a complimentary copy of the issue.

The main motivation behind the call for this special issue was to gather recent results, developments and open problems in quantum physics with non-Hermitian operators. There have been previous special issues in this journal [1, 2] and elsewhere on this subject. The intention of this issue is to reflect the current state of this rapidly-developing field. It has therefore been open to all contributions containing new results on non-Hermitian theories that are explicitly -symmetric and/or pseudo-Hermitian or quasi-Hermitian. In the last decade these types of systems have proved to be viable self-consistent physical theories with well defined unitary time-evolution and real spectra. As the large number of responses demonstrates, this is a rapidly evolving field of research. A consensus has been reached regarding most of the fundamental problems, and the general ideas and techniques are now readily being employed in many areas of physics. Nonetheless, this issue still contains some treatments of a more general nature regarding the spectral analysis of these models, in particular, the physics of the exceptional points, the breaking of the -symmetry, an interpretation of negative energies and the consistent implementation of the WKB analysis. This issue also contains a treatment of a scattering theory associated with these types of systems, weak measurements, coherent states, decoherence, unbounded metric operators and the inclusion of domain issues to obtain well defined self-adjoint theories. Contributions in the form of applications of the general ideas include: studies of classical shock-waves and tunnelling, supersymmetric models, spin chain models, models with ring structure, random matrix models, the Pauli equation, the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, quasi-exactly solvable models, integrable models such as the Calogero model, Bose–Einstein condensates, thermodynamics, nonlinear oligomers, quantum catastrophes, the Landau–Zener problem and pseudo-Fermions. Applications close to experimental realization are proposed in optics, including short light pulse models, waveguides and laser systems, and also in electronics. We hope that this issue will become a valuable reference and inspiration for the broader scientific community working in mathematical and theoretical physics. References [1] Fring A, Jones H F and Znojil M (ed) 2008 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41 240301 [2] Geyer H, Heiss D and Znojil M (ed) 2006 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 39 9963

We investigate for a large class of nonlinear wave equations, which allow for shock wave formations, how these solutions behave when they are PT -symmetrically deformed. For real solutions we find that they are transformed into peaked solutions with a discontinuity in the first derivative instead. The systems we investigate include the PT -symmetrically deformed inviscid Burgers equation recently studied by Bender and Feinberg, for which we show that it does not develop any shocks, but peaks instead. In this case we exploit the rare fact that the PT -deformation can be provided by an explicit map found by Curtright and Fairlie together with the property that the undeformed equation can be solved by the method of characteristics. We generalise the map and observe this type of behaviour for all integer values of the deformation parameter e. The peaks are formed as a result of mapping the multi-valued self-avoiding shock profile to a multivalued self-crossing function by means of the PT -deformation. For some deformation parameters we also investigate the deformation of complex solutions and demonstrate that in this case the deformation mechanism leads to discontinuties.

We provide a general construction procedure for antilinearly invariant complex root spaces. The proposed method is generic and may be applied to any Weyl group allowing to take any element of the group as a starting point for the construction. Worked out examples for several specific Weyl groups are presented, focusing especially on those cases for which no solutions were found previously. When applied in the defining relations of models based on root systems this usually leads to non-Hermitian models, which are nonetheless physically viable in a self-consistent sense as they are antilinearly invariant by construction. We discuss new types of Calogero models based on these complex roots. In addition we propose an alternative construction leading to q-deformed roots. We employ the latter type of roots to formulate a new version of affine Toda field theories based on non-simply laced roots systems. These models exhibit on the classical level a strong-weak duality in the coupling constant equivalent to a Lie algebraic duality, which is known for the quantum version of the undeformed case., Comment: 29 pages

This is a call for contributions to a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical dedicated to quantum physics with non-Hermitian operators. The main motivation behind this special issue is to gather together recent results, developments and open problems in this rapidly evolving field of research in a single comprehensive volume. We expect that such a special issue will become a valuable reference for the broad scientific community working in mathematical and theoretical physics. The issue will be open to all contributions containing new results on non-Hermitian theories which are explicitly PT-symmetric and/or pseudo-Hermitian or quasi-Hermitian. The main novelties in the past years in this area have been many experimental observations, realizations, and applications of PT symmetric Hamiltonians in optics and microwave cavities. We especially invite contributions on the theoretical interpretations of these recent PT-symmetric experiments and on theoretical proposals for new experiments. Editorial policy The Guest Editors for this issue are Carl Bender, Andreas Fring, Uwe Guenther and Hugh Jones. The areas and topics for this issue include, but are not limited to: spectral problems novel properties of complex optical potentials PT-symmetry related threshold lasers and spectral singularities construction of metric operators scattering theory supersymmetric theories Lie algebraic and Krein-space methods random matrix models classical and semi-classical models exceptional points in model systems operator theoretic approaches microwave cavities aspects of integrability and exact solvability field theories with indefinite metric All contributions will be refereed and processed according to the usual procedure of the journal. Papers should report original and significant research that has not already been published. Guidelines for preparation of contributions The deadline for contributed papers will be 31 March 2012. This deadline will allow the special issue to appear before the end of November 2012. There is a nominal page limit of 15 printed pages per contribution (invited review papers can be longer). For papers exceeding this limit, the Guest Editors reserve the right to request a reduction in length. Further advice on publishing your work in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical may be found at iopscience.iop.org/jphysa. Contributions to the special issue should be submitted by web upload via authors.iop.org, or by email to jphysa@iop.org, quoting 'JPhysA Special issue on quantum physics with non-Hermitian operators'. Submissions should ideally be in standard LaTeX form. Please see the website for further information on electronic submissions. All contributions should be accompanied by a read-me file or covering letter giving the postal and e-mail addresses for correspondence. The Publishing Office should be notified of any subsequent change of address. The special issue will be published in the print and online versions of the journal.

We address the question of whether integrable models allow for -symmetric deformations which preserve their integrability. For this purpose we carry out the Painleve test for -symmetric deformations of Burgers and the Korteweg–De Vries equations. We find that the former equation allows for infinitely many deformations which pass the Painleve test. For a specific deformation we prove the convergence of the Painleve expansion and thus establish the Painleve property for these models, which are therefore thought to be integrable. The Korteweg–De Vries equation does not allow for deformations which pass the Painleve test in complete generality, but we are able to construct a defective Painleve expansion.

We discuss several PT-symmetric deformations of superderivatives. Based on these various possibilities, we propose new families of complex PT-symmetric deformations of the supersymmetric Korteweg-de Vries equation. Some of these new models are mere fermionic extensions of the former in the sense that they are formulated in terms of superspace valued superfields containing bosonic and fermionic fields, breaking however the supersymmetry invariance. Nonetheless, we also find extensions, which may be viewed as new supersymmetric Korteweg-de Vries equation. Moreover, we show that these deformations allow for a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian formulation and construct three charges associated to the corresponding flow.

Recently Bender, Brody, Jones and Meister found that in the quantum brachistochrone problem the passage time needed for the evolution of certain initial states into specified final states can be made arbitrarily small, when the time-evolution operator is taken to be non-Hermitian but PT-symmetric. Here we demonstrate that such phenomena can also be obtained for non-Hermitian Hamiltonians for which PT-symmetry is completely broken, i.e. dissipative systems. We observe that the effect of a tunable passage time can be achieved by projecting between orthogonal eigenstates by means of a time-evolution operator associated to a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. It is not essential that this Hamiltonian is PT-symmetric., 7 pages Latex, 2 figures

Attempts to understand the quantum mechanics of non-Hermitian Hamiltonian systems can be traced back to the early days, one example being Heisenberg's endeavour to formulate a consistent model involving an indefinite metric. Over the years non-Hermitian Hamiltonians whose spectra were believed to be real have appeared from time to time in the literature, for instance in the study of strong interactions at high energies via Regge models, in condensed matter physics in the context of the XXZ-spin chain, in interacting boson models in nuclear physics, in integrable quantum field theories as Toda field theories with complex coupling constants, and also very recently in a field theoretical scenario in the quantization procedure of strings on an AdS5 x S5 background. Concrete experimental realizations of these types of systems in the form of optical lattices have been proposed in 2007. In the area of mathematical physics similar non-systematic results appeared sporadically over the years. However, intensive and more systematic investigation of these types of non- Hermitian Hamiltonians with real eigenvalue spectra only began about ten years ago, when the surprising discovery was made that a large class of one-particle systems perturbed by a simple non-Hermitian potential term possesses a real energy spectrum. Since then regular international workshops devoted to this theme have taken place. This special issue is centred around the 6th International Workshop on Pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians in Quantum Physics held in July 2007 at City University London. All the contributions contain significant new results or alternatively provide a survey of the state of the art of the subject or a critical assessment of the present understanding of the topic and a discussion of open problems. Original contributions from non-participants were also invited. Meanwhile many interesting results have been obtained and consensus has been reached on various central conceptual issues in the growing community of this subject. It is, for instance, well understood that the reality of the spectrum can be attributed either to the unbroken PT-symmetry of the entire system, that is, invariance of the Hamiltonian and the corresponding wavefunctions under a simultaneous parity transformation and time reversal, or more generally to its pseudo-Hermiticity . When the spectrum is real and discrete the Hamiltonian is actually quasi-Hermitian, with a positive-definite metric operator, and can in principle be related by a similarity transformation to an isospectral Hermitian counterpart. For all approaches well-defined procedures have been developed, which allow one to construct metric operators and therefore a consistent description of the underlying quantum mechanical observables. Even though the general principles have been laid out, it remains a challenge in most concrete cases to implement the entire procedure. Solvable models in this sense, some of which may be found in this issue, remain a rare exception. Nonetheless, despite this progress some important questions are still unanswered. For instance, according to the current understanding the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian does not uniquely define the physics of the system since a meaningful metric can no longer be associated with the system in a non-trivial and unambiguous manner. A fully consistent scattering theory has also not yet been formulated. Other issues remain controversial, such as the quantum brachistochrone problem, the problem of forming a mixture between a Hermitian and non-Hermitian system, the new phenomenological possibilities of forming a kind of worm-hole effect, etc. We would like to acknowledge the financial support of the London Mathematical Society, the Institute of Physics, the Doppler Institute in Prague and the School of Engineering and Mathematical Science of City University London. We hope this special issue will be useful to the newcomer as well as to the expert in the subject. Participants of the 6th International Workshop on Pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians in Quantum Physics.