Should PT symmetric quantum mechanics be interpreted as nonlinear?

Abstract

The Feshbach-type reduction of the Hilbert space to the physically most relevant "model" subspace is suggested as a means of a formal unification of the standard quantum mechanics with its recently proposed PT symmetric modification. The resulting "effective" Hamiltonians H(eff) are always Hermitian, and the two alternative forms of their energy-dependence are interpreted as a certain dynamical nonlinearity, responsible for the repulsion and/or attraction of the levels in the Hermitian and/or PT symmetric cases, respectively. The spontaneous PT symmetry breaking is then reflected by the loss of the Hermiticity of H(eff) while the pseudo-unitary evolution law persists in the unreduced Hilbert space.

shortened version

References in corpus (2)

• PT symmetric square well
• Conditions for complex spectra in a class of PT symmetric potentials

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