Complex magnetic fields: An improved Hardy-Laptev-Weidl inequality and quasi-self-adjointness

Abstract

We show that allowing magnetic fields to be complex-valued leads to an improvement in the magnetic Hardy-type inequality due to Laptev and Weidl. The proof is based on the study of momenta on the circle with complex magnetic fields, which is of independent interest in the context of PT-symmetric and quasi-Hermitian quantum mechanics. We study basis properties of the non-self-adjoint momenta and derive closed formulae for the similarity transforms relating them to self-adjoint operators.