Imaginary eigenvalues of Hermitian Hamiltonian with an inverted potential well and transition to the real spectrum at exceptional point by a non-Hermitian interaction

Abstract

We in this paper study the hermiticity of Hamiltonian and energy spectrum for the SU(1; 1) systems. The Hermitian Hamiltonian can possess imaginary eigenvalues in contrast with the common belief that hermiticity is a suffcient condition for real spectrum. The imaginary eigenvalues are derived in algebraic method with imaginary-frequency boson operators for the Hamiltonian of inverted potential well. Dual sets of mutually orthogonal eigenstates are required corresponding respectively to the complex conjugate eigenvalues. Arbitrary order eigenfunctions seen to be the polynomials of imaginary frequency are generated from the normalized ground-state wave functions, which are spatially non localized. The Hamiltonian including a non-Hermitian interaction term can be converted by similarity transformation to the Hermitian one with an effective potential of reduced slope, which is turnable by the interaction constant. The transformation operator should not be unitary but Hermitian different from the unitary transformation in ordinary quantum mechanics. The effective potential vanishes at a critical value of coupling strength called the exceptional point, where all eigenstates are degenerate with zero eigenvalue and transition from imaginary to real spectra appears. The SU(1; 1) generator $\widehat{S}_{z}$ with real eigenvalues determined by the commutation relation of operators, however, is non-Hermitian in the realization of imaginay-frequency boson operators. The classical counterpart of the quantum Hamiltonian with non-Hermitian interaction is a complex function of the canonical variables. It becomes by the canonical transformation of variables a real function indicating exactly the one to one quantum-classical correspondence of Hamiltonians.