We investigate four different types of representations of deformed canonical variables leading to generalized versions of Heisenberg's uncertainty relations resulting from noncommutative spacetime structures. We demonstrate explicitly how the representations are related to each other and study three characteristically different solvable models on these spaces, the harmonic oscillator, the manifestly non-Hermitian Swanson model and an intrinsically noncommutative model with Poeschl-Teller type potential. We provide an analytical expression for the metric in terms of quantities specific to the generic solution procedure and show that when it is appropriately implemented expectation values are independent of the particular representation. A recently proposed inequivalent representation resulting from Jordan twists is shown to lead to unphysical models. We suggest an anti-PT-symmetric modification to overcome this shortcoming.
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the reality of the spectrum of a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian admitting a complete set of biorthonormal eigenvectors.
We explain why the main conclusion of Bender et al, hep-th/0511229 [J. Phys. A 39 (2006) 1657] regarding the practical superiority of the non-Hermitian description of PT-symmetric quantum systems over their Hermitian description is not valid. Recalling the essential role played by the Hermitian description in the characterization and interpretation of the physical observables, we maintain that as far as the physical aspects of the theory are concerned the Hermitian description is not only unavoidable but also indispensable.
We introduce the notion of pseudo-Hermiticity and show that every Hamiltonian with a real spectrum is pseudo-Hermitian. We point out that all the PT-symmetric non-Hermitian Hamiltonians studied in the literature belong to the class of pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians, and argue that the basic structure responsible for the particular spectral properties of these Hamiltonians is their pseudo-Hermiticity. We explore the basic properties of general pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians, develop pseudo-supersymmetric quantum mechanics, and study some concrete examples, namely the Hamiltonian of the two-compon…
We show that a diagonalizable (non-Hermitian) Hamiltonian H is pseudo-Hermitian if and only if it has an antilinear symmetry, i.e., a symmetry generated by an invertible antilinear operator. This implies that the eigenvalues of H are real or come in complex conjugate pairs if and only if H possesses such a symmetry. In particular, the reality of the spectrum of H implies the presence of an antilinear symmetry. We further show that the spectrum of H is real if and only if there is a positive-definite inner-product on the Hilbert space with respect to which H is Hermitian or alternatively there …
We formulate a systematic algorithm for constructing a whole class of Hermitian position-dependent-mass Hamiltonians which, to lowest order of perturbation theory, allow a description in terms of PT-symmetric Hamiltonians. The method is applied to the Hermitian analogue of the PT-symmetric cubic anharmonic oscillator. A new example is provided by a Hamiltonian (approximately) equivalent to a PT-symmetric extension of the one-parameter trigonometric Poschl-Teller potential.
We elaborate further on the metric representation that is obtained by transferring the time-dependence from a Hermitian Hamiltonian to the metric operator in a related non-Hermitian system. We provide further insight into the procedure on how to employ the time-dependent Dyson relation and the quasi-Hermiticity relation to solve time-dependent Hermitian Hamiltonian systems. By solving both equations separately we argue here that it is in general easier to solve the former. We solve the mutually related time-dependent Schroedinger equation for a Hermitian and non-Hermitian spin 1/2, 1 and 3/2 m…
A non-Hermitian Hamiltonian that has an unbroken PT symmetry can be converted by means of a similarity transformation to a physically equivalent Hermitian Hamiltonian. This raises the following question: In which form of the quantum theory, the non-Hermitian or the Hermitian one, is it easier to perform calculations? This paper compares both forms of a non-Hermitian $ix^3$ quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian and demonstrates that it is much harder to perform calculations in the Hermitian theory because the perturbation series for the Hermitian Hamiltonian is constructed from divergent Feynman graph…
We analyze the zero energy solutions, of a two dimensional system which undergoes a non-radial symmetric, complex potential V(r,$ϕ$). By virtue of the coherent states concept, the localized states are constructed, and the consequences of the imaginary part of the potential are found both analytically and schematically.
We investigate a model system for the injection of fermionic particles from filled source sites into an empty chain. We study the ensuing dynamics for Hermitian as well as for non-Hermitian time evolution where the particles cannot return to the bath sites (quantum ratchet). A non-homogeneous hybridization between bath and chain sites permits transient currents in the chain. Non-interacting particles show decoherence in the thermodynamic limit: the average particle number and the average current density in the chain become stationary for long times, whereas the single-particle density matrix d…
We provide an explicit construction for Gazeau-Klauder coherent states related to non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with discrete bounded below and nondegenerate eigenspectrum. The underlying spacetime structure is taken to be of a noncommutative type with associated uncertainty relations implying minimal lengths. The uncertainty relations for the constructed states are shown to be saturated in a Hermitian as well as a non-Hermitian setting for a perturbed harmonic oscillator. The computed value of the Mandel parameter dictates that the coherent wavepackets are assembled according to sub-Poissonian s…
We demonstrate that the recent paper by Jana and Roy entitled ''Non-Hermitian quantum mechanics with minimal length uncertainty'' [SIGMA 5 (2009), 083, 7 pages, arXiv:0908.1755] contains various misconceptions. We compare with an analysis on the same topic carried out previously in our manuscript [arXiv:0907.5354]. In particular, we show that the metric operators computed for the deformed non-Hermitian Swanson models differs in both cases and is inconsistent in the former.
We study non-Hermitian quantum mechanics in the presence of a minimal length. In particular we obtain exact solutions of a non-Hermitian displaced harmonic oscillator and the Swanson model with minimal length uncertainty. The spectrum in both the cases are found to be real. It is also shown that the models are $η$ pseudo-Hermitian and the metric operator is found explicitly in both the cases.
Non-Hermitian systems with exceptional points lead to many intriguing phenomena due to the coalescence of both eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors, in comparison to Hermitian systems where only eigenvalues degenerate. In this paper, we have investigated entropic uncertainty relation (EUR) in a non-Hermitian system and revealed a general connection between the EUR and the exceptional points of non-Hermitian system. Compared to the unitarity dynamics determined by a Hermitian Hamiltonian, the behaviors of EUR can be well defined in two different ways depending on whether the system is loc…
Uncertainty inequalities in a non-Hermitian scenario
Instituto de Física La Plata (IFLP), CONICET–UNLP and Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata（拉普拉塔物理研究所、阿根廷国家科学研究委员会-拉普拉塔国立大学与拉普拉塔国立大学理学院）；Instituto Argentino de Matemática (IAM), CONICET and CMaLP, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata（阿根廷数学研究所、阿根廷国家科学研究委员会与拉普拉塔国立大学理学院计算数学中心）
Resonance (quasinormal) states correspond to non-Hermitian solutions to the Schrödinger equation obeying outgoing boundary conditions which lead to complex energy eigenvalues and momenta. Following the normalization rule for resonance states obtained from the residue at a complex pole of the outgoing Green's function to the problem, we propose a definition of expectation value for these states and use it to investigate the extent of validity of the Heisenberg uncertainty relations for potentials that vanish after a distance. We derive analytical expressions for the expectation values involving…
Using entropic inequalities for Shannon entropies new inequalities for some classical polynomials are obtained. To this end, photon distribution functions for one-, two- and multi-mode squeezed states in terms of Hermite, Laguerre, Legendre polynomials and Gauss' hypergeometric functions are used. The dependence between the violation of the quadrature uncertainty relation, the sign and the existence of the distribution function of such states is considered.
In terms of operator, the two complementary quantities, the predictability and visibility, are reinvestigated in a two-way interferometer. One Hermitian operator and one non-Hermitian operator (composed of two Hermitian operators) are introduced for the predictability and visibility, respectively. The predictability and visibility can not be measured exactly simultaneously, due to the non-commutation between the two operators. The sum of the variances of the predictability and visibility (the total variance), is used to measure the uncertainty, which is linked to the complementarity relation t…
A minimum length scale of the order of Planck length is a feature of many models of quantum gravity that seek to unify quantum mechanics and gravitation. Recently, Perivolaropoulos in his seminal work [Phys. Rev.D 95, 103523 (2017)] predicted the simultaneous existence of minimal and maximal length measurements of quantum gravity. More recently, we have shown that both measurable lengths can be obtained from position-dependent noncommutativity [J. Phys. A: Math.Theor. 53, 115303 (2020)]. In this paper, we present an alternative derivation of these lengths from non-Hermitian position-dependent …
A diagonalizable non-Hermitian Hamiltonian having a real spectrum may be used to define a unitary quantum system, if one modifies the inner product of the Hilbert space properly. We give a comprehensive and essentially self-contained review of the basic ideas and techniques responsible for the recent developments in this subject. We provide a critical assessment of the role of the geometry of the Hilbert space in conventional quantum mechanics to reveal the basic physical principle motivating our study. We then offer a survey of the necessary mathematical tools and elaborate on a number of rel…
Deformations of the canonical commutation relations lead to non-Hermitian momentum and position operators and therefore almost inevitably to non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. We demonstrate that such type of deformed quantum mechanical systems may be treated in a similar framework as quasi/pseudo and/or PT-symmetric systems, which have recently attracted much attention. For a newly proposed deformation of exponential type we compute the minimal uncertainty and minimal length, which are essential in almost all approaches to quantum gravity.
Robertson and Hadamard-Robertson theorems on non-negative definite hermitian forms are generalized to an arbitrary ordered field. These results are then applied to the case of formal power series fields, and the Heisenberg-Robertson, Robertson-Schrödinger and trace uncertainty relations in deformation quantization are found. Some conditions under which the uncertainty relations are minimized are also given.
The uncertainty relation is one of the key ingredients of quantum theory. Despite the great efforts devoted to this subject, most of the variance-based uncertainty relations are state-dependent and suffering from the triviality problem of zero lower bounds. Here we develop a method to get uncertainty relations with state-independent lower bounds. The method works by exploring the eigenvalues of a Hermitian matrix composed by Bloch vectors of incompatible observables and is applicable for both pure and mixed states and for arbitrary number of N- dimensional observables. The uncertainty relation…
In quantum theory, a physical observable is represented by a Hermitian operator as it admits real eigenvalues. This stems from the fact that any measuring apparatus that is supposed to measure a physical observable will always yield a real number. However, reality of eigenvalue of some operator does not mean that it is necessarily Hermitian. There are examples of non-Hermitian operators which may admit real eigenvalues under some symmetry conditions. However, in general, given a non-Hermitian operator, its average value in a quantum state is a complex number and there are only very limited met…
In a setting of noncommutative space with minimal length we confirm the general assertion that the more nonclassical an input state for a beam splitter is, the more entangled its output state becomes. By analysing various nonclassical properties we find that the odd Schrödinger cat states are more nonclassical than the even Schrödinger cat states, hence producing more entanglement, which in turn are more nonclassical than coherent states. Both the nonclassicality and the entanglement can be enhanced by increasing the noncommutativity of the underlying space. In addition we find as a by-product…
Two special situations where the standard uncertainty product inequality appears to be useless are modified. One such case is noted to also trivialize the recently-introduced alternatives [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 260401 (2014); Sci. Rep. 6, 23201 (2016)] involving sums of variances. A careful discussion is presented on the experimental justifications of some of the relations [Phys. Rev. A 93, 052108 (2016)] using qutrit and qubit states. Alternative bypass routes are put forward to tackle this situation, with and without involving any auxiliary state. This latter strategy is noted to be vital in…
We show how generic non-Hermitian tight-binding lattice models can be realized in an unconditional, quantum-mechanically consistent manner by constructing an appropriate open quantum system. We focus on the quantum steady states of such models for both fermionic and bosonic systems. Surprisingly, key features and spatial structures in the steady state cannot be simply understood from the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian alone. Using the 1D Hatano-Nelson model as a paradigmatic example, we show that the steady state has a marked sensitivity to boundary conditions. This dependence however is qualitativ…
Uncertainty principle is one of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. In this work, we derive two uncertainty equalities, which hold for all pairs of incompatible observables. We also obtain an uncertainty relation in weak measurement which captures the limitation on the preparation of pre- and post-selected ensemble and hold for two non-Hermitian operators corresponding to two non-commuting observables.
One of the formulations of Heisenberg uncertainty principle, concerning so-called measurement uncertainty, states that the measurement of one observable modifies the statistics of the other. Here, we derive such a measurement uncertainty principle from two comprehensible assumptions: impossibility of instantaneous messaging at a distance (no-signaling), and violation of Bell inequalities (non-locality). The uncertainty is established for a pair of observables of one of two spatially separated systems that exhibit non-local correlations. To this end, we introduce a gentle form of measurement wh…
We provide a unified and strengthened framework for the product form and the sum form variance-based uncertainty relations by constructing a unified uncertainty relation. In the unified framework, we deduce that the uncertainties of the incompatible observables are bounded by not only the commutator of themselves, but also the quantities related with the other operator. This operator can provide information so that we can capture the uncertainty of the measurement result more accurately, and thus is named as the information operator. The introduction of the information operator can fix the def…
We provide a systematic procedure to relate a three dimensional q-deformed oscillator algebra to the corresponding algebra satisfied by canonical variables describing noncommutative spaces. The large number of possible free parameters in these calculations is reduced to a manageable amount by imposing various different versions of PT-symmetry on the underlying spaces, which are dictated by the specific physical problem under consideration. The representations for the corresponding operators are in general non-Hermitian with regard to standard inner products and obey algebras whose uncertainty …
Consider the set of all Hamiltonians whose largest and smallest energy eigenvalues, E_max and E_min, differ by a fixed energy ω. Given two quantum states, an initial state |ψ_I> and a final state |ψ_F>, there exist many Hamiltonians H belonging to this set under which |ψ_I> evolves in time into |ψ_F>. Which Hamiltonian transforms the initial state to the final state in the least possible time τ? For Hermitian Hamiltonians, $τ$ has a nonzero lower bound. However, among complex non-Hermitian PT-symmetric Hamiltonians satisfying the same energy constraint, τcan be made arbitrarily small without v…
We derive several entanglement conditions employing non-hermitian operators. We start with two conditions that were derived previously for field mode operators, and use them to derive conditions that can be used to show the existence of field-atom entanglement and entanglement between groups of atoms. The original conditions can be strengthened by making them invariant under certain sets of local unitary transformations, such as Gaussian operations. We then apply these conditions to several examples, such as the Dicke model. We conclude with a short discussion of how local uncertainty relation…
It was at the dawn of the historical developments of quantum mechanics when Schrödinger, Kennard and Darwin proposed an interesting type of Gaussian wave packets, which do not spread out while evolving in time. Originally, these wave packets are the prototypes of the renowned discovery, which are familiar as coherent states today. Coherent states are inevitable in the study of almost all areas of modern science, and the rate of progress of the subject is astonishing nowadays. Nonclassical states constitute one of the distinguished branches of coherent states having applications in various subj…
Based on mixedness definition as M=1-tr(\r{ho}^2), we obtain a new variance-based uncertainty equality along with an inequality for Hermitian operators of a single-qubit system. The obtained uncertainty equality can be used as a measure of the system mixedness. A qubit system with feedback control is also exploited to demonstrate the new uncertainty.
The quantum-mechanical framework in which observables are associated with Hermitian operators is too narrow to discuss measurements of such important physical quantities as elapsed time or harmonic-oscillator phase. We introduce a broader framework that allows us to derive quantum-mechanical limits on the precision to which a parameter---e.g., elapsed time---may be determined via arbitrary data analysis of arbitrary measurements on $N$ identically prepared quantum systems. The limits are expressed as generalized Mandelstam-Tamm uncertainty relations, which involve the operator that generates d…
We study a noncanonical Hilbert space representation of the polymer quantum mechanics. It is shown that Heisenberg algebra get some modifications in the constructed setup from which a generalized uncertainty principle will naturally come out. Although the extracted physical results are the same as those obtained from the standard canonical representation, the noncanonical representation may be notable in view of its possible connection with the generalized uncertainty theories suggested by string theory. In this regard, by considering an Snyder-deformed Heisenberg algebra we show that since th…
The example of nonpositive trace-class Hermitian operator for which Robertson-Schroedinger uncertainty relation is fulfilled is presented. The partial scaling criterion of separability of multimode continuous variable system is discussed in the context of using nonpositive maps of density matrices.
We formulate a general complementarity relation starting from any Hermitian operator with discrete non-degenerate eigenvalues. We then elucidate the relationship between quantum complementarity and the Heisenberg-Robertson's uncertainty relation. We show that they are intimately connected. Finally we exemplify the general theory with some specific suggested experiments.
There is a common belief in the condensed matter community that bulk quantities become insensitive to the boundary condition in the infinite-volume limit. Here we reconsider this statement in terms of recent arguments of non-Hermitian skin effects, -strong dependence of spectra on boundary conditions for the non-Hermitian Hamiltonians-, in the traditional Green's function formalism. We find the criterion for quantities to be sensitive/insensitive against the boundary condition in Hermitian correlated/disordered systems, which is characterized by the residue theorem. We also discuss the uncerta…
The three ways of generalization of canonical coherent states are briefly reviewed and compared with the emphasis laid on the (minimum) uncertainty way. The characteristic uncertainty relations, which include the Schroedinger and Robertson inequalities, are extended to the case of several states. It is shown that the standard SU(1,1) and SU(2) coherent states are the unique states which minimize the second order characteristic inequality for the three generators. A set of states which minimize the Schroedinger inequality for the Hermitian components of the su_q(1,1) ladder operator is also con…
Jianghan University（江汉大学）；North Carolina State University（北卡罗来纳州立大学）；Central China Normal University（华中师范大学）；Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)（科学技术研究局（A*STAR））
In this Letter, we show that the fulfillment of uncertainty relations is a sufficient criterion for a quantum-mechanically permissible state. We specifically construct two pseudo-spin observables for an arbitrary non-positive Hermitian matrix whose uncertainty relation is violated. This method enables us to systematically derive separability conditions for all negative partial-transpose states in experimentally accessible forms. In particular, generalized entanglement criteria are derived from the Schrodinger-Robertson inequalities for bipartite continuous-variable states.
The continuum of real numbers has served well as a model for physical space in mechanics and field theories. However it is a well-motivated and popular idea that at the fundamental Planck scale the combination of gravitational and quantum effects forces us to re-evaluate the concept of space (and time), and some sort of discreteness or granularity is expected. Here we study a cubic grid of points representing fundamental volumes of space and derive the spectra of momenta and wave number, which are not generally proportional to each other. The momentum is bounded and discrete for a finite grid.…
