On a special property of tridiagonal matrices. Application to dual quasi-exactly solvable sextic potentials in quantum mechanics

Abstract

We put forward and prove a simple theorem stating that the eigenvalues of a tridiagonal matrix change their sign (as a set), once the signs of the diagonal elements of the matrix are changed. We also provide an example of application of this theorem in quantum physics. Specifically, we introduce the notion of duality and self-duality for a sextic-polynomial quasi-exactly-solvable potential, and demonstrate that the algebraic parts of the spectrum of the dual potentials have signs opposite to one another (as sets). Our Theorem furnishes an elegant one-line proof of this statement. In addition, we also prove it by purely quantum-mechanical means - a far less straightforward method that requires some effort.