A problem of Berry and knotted zeros in the eigenfunctions of the harmonic oscillator

DOI10.4171/JEMS/767MaRDI QIDQ1708552zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Peng Zhang

Publication date 23 March 2018

Published in Journal of the European Mathematical Society (JEMS) (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05101

zbMATH Keywords

finite linksharmonic oscillatornodal sets

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Oscillation, zeros of solutions, mean value theorems, etc. in context of PDEs (35B05) Asymptotic behavior of solutions to PDEs (35B40) General topics in linear spectral theory for PDEs (35P05) PDEs in connection with quantum mechanics (35Q40)

Abstract: We prove that, given any finite link L in R^3, there is a high energy complex-valued eigenfunction of the harmonic oscillator such that its nodal set contains a union of connected components diffeomorphic to L. This solves a problem of Berry on the existence of knotted zeros in bound states of a quantum system.

Review text

The authors use techniques developed in their previous papers (see e.g. [\textit{A. Enciso} and \textit{D. Peralta-Salas}, Ann. Math. (2) 175, No. 1, 345--367 (2012; Zbl 1238.35092)]) to prove that if ``\(L\) is a finite link in \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\), one can deform it with a diffeomorphism \(\Phi\) of \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\) so that \(\Phi(L)\) is a union of connected components of the nodal set \(\psi^{-1}(0)\) of a complex-valued eigenfunction \(\psi\) of the harmonic oscillator in \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\). One also proves that \(\Phi(L)\) is structurally stable. This solves a conjecture of \textit{M. Berry} formulated in his paper [``Knotted zeros in the quantum states of hydrogen, Found. Phys. 31, 659--667 (2001)]. A generalization to higher dimensions of this results is shortly discussed in the last section of the paper.

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• Entanglement of vortices in the Ginzburg-Landau equations for superconductors

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