Schrödinger formalism for a particle constrained to a surface in ${\mathbb{R}}_1^3$

Abstract

In this work it is studied the Schrödinger equation for a non-relativistic particle restricted to move on a surface $S$ in a three-dimensional Minkowskian medium ${\mathbb{R}}_1^3$, i.e., the space ${\mathbb{R}}^3$ equipped with the metric $\text{diag}(-1,1,1)$. After establishing the consistency of the interpretative postulates for the new Schrödinger equation, namely the conservation of probability and the hermiticity of the new Hamiltonian built out of the Laplacian in ${\mathbb{R}}_1^3$, we investigate the confining potential formalism in the new effective geometry. Like in the well-known Euclidean case, it is found a geometry-induced potential acting on the dynamics $V_S=-\frac{{\hslash }^2}{2m}\left(\epsilon H^2-K\right)$ which, besides the usual dependence on the mean ($H$) and Gaussian ($K$) curvatures of the surface, has the remarkable feature of a dependence on the signature of the induced metric of the surface: $\epsilon =+1$ if the signature is $(-,+)$, and $\epsilon =1$ if the signature is $(+,+)$. Applications to surfaces of revolution in ${\mathbb{R}}_1^3$ are examined, and we provide examples where the Schrödinger equation is exactly solvable. It is hoped that our formalism will prove useful in the modeling of novel materials such as hyperbolic metamaterials, which are characterized by a hyperbolic dispersion relation, in contrast to the usual spherical (elliptic) dispersion typically found in conventional materials.

26 pages, 1 figure; comments are welcome