Mathematical Foundation for the Generalised Brillouin zone of m-banded Toeplitz operators

Abstract

We show that the spectrum of the open-boundary limit of banded Toeplitz matrices is real whenever the associated symbol function is real-valued along a closed polar curve. Building on this result, we develop both analytical and numerical methods to symmetrise a class of banded non-Hermitian Toeplitz matrices whose asymptotic spectra are real. Finally, we provide a rigorous mathematical foundation for the generalised Brillouin zone, a concept widely used in non-Hermitian physics, by proving that it coincides with the polar curve on which the symbol function takes real values.