The algebraic method enables one to study the properties of the spectrum of a quadratic Hamiltonian through the mathematical properties of a matrix representation called regular or adjoint. This matrix exhibits exceptional points where it becomes defective and can be written in canonical Jordan form. It is shown that any quadratic function of $K$ coordinates and $K$ momenta leads to a $2K$ differential equation for those dynamical variables. We illustrate all these features of the algebraic method by means of the Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator and its PT-variant. We also consider a trivial quantiza…
A system of two independent Bosonic Harmonic Oscillators is converted into the respective fourth-order derivative Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator model. The conversion procedure displays transparently how the quantization of the fourth-order derivative Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator has to be performed in order not to suffer from the divergence problems of the vacuum state and path integrals as conjectured most recently by P. D. Mannheim in his article ``Determining the normalization of the quantum field theory vacuum, with implications for quantum gravity" [arXiv:2301.13029 [hep-th]]. In order to make t…
We analyse the emergence of the Unruh effect within the context of a field Lagrangian theory associated to the Pais-Uhlenbeck fourth order oscillator model. To this end, we introduce a transformation that brings the Hamiltonian bounded from below and is consistent with $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum mechanics. We find that, as far as we consider different frequencies within the Pais-Uhlenbeck model, a particle together with an antiparticle of different masses are created as may be traced back to the Bogoliubov transformation associated to the interaction between the Unruh-DeWitt detector and…
We study the quantum entanglement of coupled Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillators using the formalism of thermo-field dynamics. The entanglement entropy is computed for the specific cases of two and a ring of $N$ coupled Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillators of fourth order. It is shown that the entanglement entropy depends on the temperatures, frequencies and coupling parameters of the different degrees of freedom corresponding to harmonic oscillators. We also make remarks on the appearance of instabilities of higher-derivative oscillators in the context of AdS/CFT correspondence. Finally, we advert to the inform…
This paper considers one-mode open quantum harmonic oscillators with a pair of conjugate position and momentum variables driven by vacuum bosonic fields according to a linear quantum stochastic differential equation. Such systems model cavity resonators in quantum optical experiments. Assuming that the quadratic Hamiltonian of the oscillator is specified by a positive definite energy matrix, we consider a modified version of the quantum Karhunen-Loeve expansion of the system variables proposed recently. The expansion employs eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the two-point commutator kernel for…