The Physical Interpretation of PT-invariant Potentials

Abstract

A purely imaginary potential can provide a phenomenological description of creation and absorption of quantum mechanical particles. PT-invariance of such a potential ensures that the non-unitary phenomena occur in a balanced manner. In spite of wells and sinks which locally violate the conservation of quantum probability, there is no net get loss or gain of particles. This, in turn, is intuitively consistent with real energy eigenvalues.