Anti- PT-Symmetric Harmonic Oscillator and its Relation to the Inverted Harmonic Oscillator

Abstract

We treat the quantum dynamics of a harmonic oscillator as well as its inverted counterpart in the Schrödinger picture. Generally in the most papers in the literature, the inverted harmonic oscillator is formally obtained from the harmonic oscillator by the replacement of ωby iω, this leads to unbounded eigenvectors. This explicitly demonstrates that there are some unclear points involved in redefining the variables in the harmonic oscillator inversion. To remedy this situation, we introduce a scaling operator (Dyson transformation) by connecting the inverted harmonic oscillator to an anti- $PT$-symmetric harmonic oscillator, and we obtain the standard quasi-Hermiticity relation which would ensure the time invariance of the eigenfunction's norm. We give a complete description for the eigenproblem. We show that the wave functions for this system are normalized in the sense of the pseudo-scalar product. A Gaussian wave packet of the inverted oscillator is investigated by using the ladder operators method. This wave packet is found to be associated with the generalized coherent state that can be crucially utilized for investigating the mean values of the space and momentum operators. We find that these mean values reproduce the classical motion.