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Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides

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2007 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 40 8371

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IOP PUBLISHING JOURNAL OF PHYSICS A: MATHEMATICAL AND THEORETICAL

J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 40 (2007) 83718384 doi:10.1088/1751-8113/40/29/012

Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides

Hynek Kovark1 and Andrea Sacchetti2
1 Institute of Analysis, Dynamics and Modeling, Universit
at Stuttgart, PF 80 11 40,
D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany
2 Dipartimento di Matematica Pura ed Applicata, Universita degli studi di Modena e Reggio
Emilia, Via Campi 213/B, Modena 41100, Italy

E-mail: kovarik@mathematik.uni-stuttgart.de and Sacchetti@unimore.it

Received 13 December 2006, in final form 30 May 2007

Published 3 July 2007
Online at stacks.iop.org/JPhysA/40/8371

Abstract
In this paper we consider embedded eigenvalues of a Schrodinger Hamiltonian
in a waveguide induced by a symmetric perturbation. It is shown that these
eigenvalues become unstable and turn into resonances after twisting of the
waveguide. The perturbative expansion of the resonance width is calculated
for weakly twisted waveguides and the influence of the twist on resonances in
a concrete model is discussed in detail.

PACS numbers: 03.65.w, 03.65.Ge, 73.63.b

Mathematics Subject Classification: 35P05, 81Q10

1. Introduction

Quantum and electromagnetic waveguides have been studied since many decades; see
[18, 22, 23, 27] and also [24] where the classical and the quantum pictures are compared.
In this framework the spectral analysis of differential operators in tubular domains has become
a research field of a certain interest [6, 15, 16]. Moreover, with the introduction of nano-
devices, such as nanotubes, new open problems in quantum transmission for such structures
appeared [7].
We consider here a waveguide type domain
= R (see figure 1, on the left), where
the cross section of the waveguide is an open bounded and connected subset of R2 . We
impose Dirichlet boundary conditions at the boundary of
. The spectrum of the free operator
 in L2 (
) is absolutely continuous and covers the half-line [E1 , ), where E1 is the
lowest eigenvalue of the Dirichlet Laplacian on . It is a well-known fact that this spectrum
is unstable against perturbations; indeed, a negative perturbation, vanishing at infinity, of 
will induce at least one bound state below the threshold E1 and new embedded bound states
in the half-line [E1 , +) (see, e.g., figure 2). The perturbation can be either of a potential
type or of a geometric type; see [5, 9, 16] and references there. Similar effects occur also in
two-dimensional strips [2, 4, 15]. These new bound states below the threshold E1 correspond

1751-8113/07/298371+14$30.00 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK 8371

8372 H Kovark and A Sacchetti

z
z

x
x

y y

Figure 1. On the left, a plot of the surface of a rectangular waveguide without twisting; on the
right, a plot of the surface of the twisted rectangular waveguide. The bold line represents the
boundary of .

E1 E2 E3

Figure 2. The discrete spectrum of H0V consists of finitely many simple eigenvalues below E1
(denoted by a full circle); the essential spectrum is given by the half-line [E1 , +). Furthermore,
a non-empty set of simple eigenvalues (denoted by an empty circle) embedded in the half-line
[E1 , +) occurs.

to the particles (electrons) which do not propagate along
, but remain localized in a bounded
region of
.
Recently it has been shown [14] that the presence of bound states in
can be, up to a
certain extent, suppressed by another geometrical perturbation: the so-called twisting which
is defined as follows. For a given x R and s := (y, z) , we define the mapping
f : R R3
by
f (x, s) = (x, y cos((x)) + z sin((x)), z cos((x)) y sin((x))), (1)
where > 0 is a real parameter and : R R is a differentiable function. Furthermore, we
introduce

:= f (
).
Clearly,
is a tube which is twisted unless the function is constant (in figure 1 we plot,
respectively, a rectangular tube without and with twisting). The result of [14] shows that if
the cross section is not rotationally symmetric and the tube
is twisted, even only locally,
then the bound states for the perturbed Hamiltonian  + V do not appear for any negative
potential V (x), but only if V is strong enough. In other words, one could say that a twisting
of a tubular domain
improves the transport of charged particles in
in the sense that it
protects the particles to get trapped by weak perturbations. The repulsive effect of twisting
has been recently observed also in [17], where the absence of discrete eigenvalues in tubes
which are simultaneously mildly curved and mildly twisted. Moreover, in [3] the repulsive
effect of twisting is demonstrated for bounded tubes whose thickness goes to zero.
Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides 8373

Similar results were also obtained for two-dimensional waveguides with combined
boundary conditions or with a local magnetic field [13, 20]. However, the geometrical
perturbations of the waveguide generically induce also the existence of resonances, i.e.
metastable states with very long lifetimes (see [1012]).
It is the aim of the present paper to describe the influence of twisting on the resonances in
the waveguides. More precisely, we study the situation in which the free Laplacian is perturbed
by an attractive potential V (x), which decays at infinity along the waveguide direction, where
x R represents the coordinate along the waveguide direction. The point spectrum of the
perturbed Hamiltonian  + V (x) consists, in addition to the bound states below E1 , of
infinitely many eigenvalues embedded in the continuum [E1 , ) (see figure 2). It was shown
in [10], for two-dimensional waveguides, that these embedded eigenvalues generically turn
into resonances in the presence of a constant magnetic field. Following the method of [10],
we show that this happens also when the magnetic field is replaced by the twisting, provided
the cross section is not rotationally symmetric (see theorem 1). For weak twisting we also
give the perturbative expansion of the corresponding resonance width.
In order to obtain a precise estimate on the imaginary part of the resonances and, in
particular, to prove that it is strictly negative we consider in section 5 a concrete model in
which the potential V approximates a one-dimensional point interaction. For such a model
we explicitly calculate the leading term of the imaginary part of a chosen resonance, see
proposition 1, and we prove that for suitable values of the parameters (see remark 9), the
imaginary part of the resonance is strictly negative.

2. Preliminaries

Throughout the paper we will denote by , H the scalar product in a Hilbert space H with the
convention u, vH = u,
vH for all C and u, v H . For a real-valued measurable
bounded function V (x) on R we formally define the Hamiltonians
H 0 =  and H V =  + V (x) in L2 (
)
with Dirichlet boundary conditions at
. The operator H V is associated with the closed
quadratic form


V
Q [] := [||2 + V (x)||2 ] dx ds, (2)


 
with the form domain D Q V = H10 (
).
Given a test function C0 (
) it is useful to introduce the following shorthand:
:= yz zy . (3)
As usual in such situations, in order to analyse the operator H V we pass from the twisted tube

to the untwisted tube
by means of a simple substitution of variables. This gives


QV [] = (|s |2 + |x + (x) 2 2
| + V (x)|| ) dx ds,


 
with the form domain D QV = H01 (
) and with the notation
s := (y , z ).
In other words, the operator HV , associated with QV and unitarily equivalent to H V , acts on
its domain in L2 (
) in the weak sense as
HV = y2 z2 [x + (x)
] + V (x) = H0 + U ,
2 V V
8374 H Kovark and A Sacchetti

where
H0V = x2 y2 z2 + V (x)
and
UV = [x + (x)
2 2
] + x
= 2(x)
x (x)

2 2
(x)2 .
Remark 1. The term UV is a symmetric operator on L2 (
) with Dirichlet boundary conditions
at
.
In order to show that the embedded eigenvalues of H0V turn into the resonances once the
waveguide is twisted, we employ the method of the exterior complex scaling in combination
with the regular perturbation theory [8]. We start by locating the spectrum of the untwisted
model.

3. Spectrum of H0V

We will suppose that V satisfies the following

Assumption A. The function V (x) is not identically equal to zero and



(1 + x 2 )|V (x)| dx < and V (x) dx
0. (4)
R R

It then follows from [25] (see, e.g. theorem XIII.110 in and its Notes) that the operator
h := x2 + V (x) in L2 (R)
possesses finitely many negative eigenvalues {j }N j =1 , N  1, each of multiplicity 1. We
denote by j (x) the corresponding normalized eigenfunctions. The essential spectrum of h
covers the positive half-line [0, ). On the other hand, it is well known that the operator D ,
i.e. the Dirichlet Laplacian on , is positive definite and has purely discrete spectrum. Let
{En }n=1 be the non-decreasing sequence of its eigenvalues and let n (s) denote the associated
normalized eigenfunctions. The set of such eigenfunctions is an orthonormal basis of L2 ().
We denote by
 = {E = j + En , j = 1, . . . , N, n  1}
the set of eigenvalues of H0V with associated normalized eigenvectors
n,j (x, s) = j (x)n (s)
and
+ =  [E1 , +),  =  (, E1 ),
where  is not empty since j < 0 for any j . Then, by the standard arguments [25] the
spectrum of
H V =  + V (x), in L2 (R )
 V0   V  V
is given by H0 = d H0 ess H0 , where
   
d H0V =  and ess H0V = [E1 , ).
In addition, H0V possesses a point spectrum embedded into the continuum given by + (see
figure 2).
We expect that when becomes non-zero these embedded eigenvalues generically turn
into resonances, which are the main object of our study.
Remark 2. Since the operator H0V commutes with complex conjugation, its eigenfunctions
can be assumed to be real-valued.
Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides 8375

E1 E2 E3

Figure 3. The discrete spectrum of H0V ( ) consists of a sequence of real and simple eigenvalues
(denoted by a circle); the essential spectrum is given by the half-lines En + e2i Im R+ .

4. Complex scaling

Henceforth, we will employ the method of exterior complex scaling to the operator HV . In
order to do so, we will need some assumptions on the functions V and :

Assumption B. V extends to an analytic function with respect to x in some sector

M := { C : |arg |
}, with > 0.
Moreover, V is uniformly bounded in M .

Assumption C. extends to analytic function with respect to x in

M = M { C : |Im |
}, with > 0,
and is uniformly bounded in M . In addition, (x)
> 0, x R.

Remark 3. Since is uniformly bounded in M , from the Cauchy theorem it follows that
is uniformly bounded in M
for any 0 <
< .

In analogy with [10] we introduce the mapping S , which acts as a complex dilation in the
longitudinal variable x:
(S )(x, s) = e/2 (e x, s), C.
The transformed operator then takes the form
HV ( ) = S HV S1 = H0V ( ) + UV ( ),
where
H0V ( ) = S H0V S1 = e2 x2 y2 z2 + V (e x)
and
UV ( ) = S UV S1 = 2 e (e
x)x e (e
x) 2 2 (e x)2 . (5)

Lemma 1. Let V satisfy assumptions A and B, then H0V ( ) is an analytic family of type A
with respect to . Furthermore, the spectrum of H0V ( ) has the form (see figure 3)
  
H0V ( ) = [En + e2i Im R+ ]. (6)
n

More precisely, the essential spectrum of H0V ( ) consists of the sequence of the half-lines
En + e2i Im R+ , n = 1, 2, . . . , and the discrete spectrum of H0V ( ) consists of the set of
eigenvalues j + En with associated eigenvectors
[n,j ( )](x, s) = [S n,j ](x, s) = e/2 j (e x)n (s). (7)
8376 H Kovark and A Sacchetti

Proof. It follows from assumption B that the family of operators H0V ( ) is analytic of type A
with respect to (see [19, chapter 7]). For what concerns its spectrum it is enough to remark
that the operator
h( ) = S hS1 = e2 x2 + V (e x)
in L2 (R) has the spectrum given by
(h( )) = {1 , . . . , N } e2i Im R+ .
By the Ichinoses lemma, see [25, Sec. XIII.10], we then obtain formula (6) for the spectrum
of the sum h( ) y2 z2 . 

Lemma 2. Let V satisfy assumptions A and B and let satisfy assumption C, then the
operator UV ( ) is a relatively bounded perturbation of H0V ( ). Moreover, the family of
operators HV ( ) is analytic of type A for all such that | | < R , where R as 0.

Proof. In order to prove the lemma we consider a test function C0 (
). Using the
assumptions on V we find out that there exists a positive constant c (here and below, c will
denote a positive constant whose value changes from line to line) such that
 V        
H ( ) 2  c  2 2 +  2 2 +  2 2 c2 .
0 x y z

From this inequality and using the fact that is bounded we arrive at
 2 2     
 
c  2 2 +  2 2 + z 2 + y 2
z y
 2  2 

c z2  + y2  + 2
 2 

c H0V ( )  + 2
and
 2 
 2
c(z 2 + y 2 )
c H0V ( )  + 2 . (8)
As for the mixed term in UV ( )we note that
    2  2 
x 2 = x , x L2 (
)
2 x2 
12 2  + x2  . (9)
Collecting all these estimates we finally conclude that there exists a positive constant C,
depending on and V , such that
 V    
U ( ) 2
C( + 2 )2 H V ( ) 2 + 2 . (10)
0

To prove the

 second
 statement
 of the lemma we first notice that by assumption B we have
D H0V ( ) = D H0V (0) . By assumption C and [19, section 7.2] it thus suffices to show that
both x and are relatively bounded with respect to H0V ( ). However, this follows from
(8) and (10). 

Lemma 2 tells us that the eigenvalues of HV ( ) are analytic functions of . By a standard

argument [8], it turns out that they are in fact independent of . The non-real eigenvalues of
HV ( ), for such that Im > 0, are identified with the resonances of HV [8].

Remark 4. As a result of the previous proof it follows that UV ( ) is a regular perturbation

of the operator H0V ( ). This enables us to apply the analytic perturbation theory to the
eigenvalues of the operator H0V ( ).

Theorem 1. Let E = En +j + be a simple eigenvalue of H0V ) where is a fixed complex

number such that Im > 0. For any ball B centred in E there exists  > 0, depending on E,
Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides 8377

such that for any with || <  , there is an eigenvalue E() of HV ( ) belonging to B and
with the imaginary part given by
Im E() = 2 a + O(3 ) (11)
where a is a constant independent of and equal to

a= | n , k L2 () |2 vj , Im r (E Ek )vj L2 (R) . (12)
k
k 

Here
vj = (2
x + )
j, k  = max{k : Ek E < 0}
and Im r stands for the imaginary part of the reduced resolvent [19] of h = x2 + V with
respect to the eigenvalue j :
1
vj , Im r (E Ek )vj L2 (R) = lim+ [vj , r (E (Ek + i))vj L2 (R)
0 2i
vj , r (E (Ek i))vj L2 (R) ].

Proof. Let ( ) = n,j ( ) be the associated normalized eigenvector (7) belonging to E,

where n and j are fixed. We apply the regular perturbation theory saying that for some fixed
r > 0 small enough and for any with modulus small enough, in the given ball Br (E) exists
only one eigenvalue E() of HV ( ) with an associated eigenvector

1  1
( ) = HV ( ) ( ) d.
2 i Br
Furthermore, the regular perturbation theory also yields that this eigenvalue is given by means
of the convergent perturbative series (see, e.g. [25, XII.6])


), HV ( ) ( ) 2
( L (
)

E() = = em (), em = O(m )
(
), ( )L2 (
)
m=0

where, as usual,



), UV ( )( ) 2
( , UV L2 (
)
L (
)
e0 = E and e1 = =
(
), ( )L2 (
) , L2 (
)
are constant with respect to , and is the real-valued vector (7) for = 0 (see remark 2).
These constants e0 and e1 are real-valued since UV is a symmetric operator (see remark 1). If
we prove that Im e2 = 2 a + O(3 ) for some a > 0 independent of then the stated result
follows. To this end, we recall that (see [10])
Im e2 = Im a2 (1 + O()),
where

1
   d
a2 = ), UV ( ) H0V ( ) 1 UV ( )( ) 2
(
2 i L (
) E
Br

= lim+ f (, E + i) = lim+ f ( = 0, E + i)
0 0

and

  
), UV ( ) HV ( ) 1 UV ( )( ) 2
f (, ) = ( L (
)

 
+  (
), UV ( )( ) 2 2 ( E)1 .
L (
)
8378 H Kovark and A Sacchetti

Hence

 
 
a2 = , UV R(E
+ i0)UV L2 (
) := lim+ , UV R(E
+ i)UV L2 (
) (13)
0

) is the reduced resolvent of H V with respect to the eigenvalue E (see [25, X.II.6]
where R( 0
and [19]). Recalling that has the form
(x, s) = n,j (x, s) = j (x)n (s)
for some n and j and that {k (s)} 2
k=1 is a basis of L (), we obtain



UV (x, s) = dk (x)k (s), where dk (x) = k , UV L2 () .
k=1

Using the fact that UV L2 (
), lemma 2 and the dominated convergence theorem, we
conclude that


a2 = dk , r (E Ek + i0)dk L2 (R) , (14)
k=1

where r ( ) is the reduced resolvent of h = x2 + V with respect to j . Concerning the

imaginary part of a2 we point out that only finitely many terms on the rhs of (14) have a
non-zero imaginary part. The latter follows from the fact that dk , r (E Ek + i0)dk  is real
for any k large enough, more precisely for any k > k  , where
k  = max{k : Ek E < 0}.
From
dk (x) = vj (x) n , k L2 () [1 + O()], vj = (2
x + )
j,
we can thus conclude that
a2 = 2 A[1 + O()],
where

A = An,j = | n , k L2 () |2 vj , r (E Ek + i0)vj L2 (R)
k
k 

is independent of . This implies (12) since


a = Im A = | n , k L2 () |2 vj , Im r (E Ek )vj L2 (R) . 
k
k 
Remark 5. Note that if is rotationally symmetric, then a = 0. Indeed, since n is
rotationally symmetric whenever En is simple, this follows from (12).

Remark 6. We point out that Im r( ) is a symmetric and positive operator for real (see,
> E1 fixed there exists  > 0
e.g., [10]). We can thus generically expect that for any E
V for
small enough such that H ( ) does not have a discrete spectrum in the interval [E1 , E]
any 0 < ||
; more precisely, for any > 0 the set

 
d HV ( ) {[E1 , E]
i[, +]}
is empty or it consists of finitely many points with the imaginary part strictly negative (see
figure 4). As a result, it follows that the embedded eigenvalue E + of the untwisted model
turns into a resonance when an appropriate twisting is applied.
Concerning the assumption on the multiplicity of E we note that it is closely related to
the multiplicity of En , the eigenvalues of D . In general, and especially for cross-sections
Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides 8379

E1 E2 E3

Figure 4. The discrete spectrum of HV ( ), for = 0 small enough, consists of two parts; the first
part is given by the real and simple eigenvalues (full circle) below E1 , the second one is given by
simple eigenvalues with real part larger that E1 and with imaginary part strictly negative (empty
circle).

with a high degree of symmetry, some eigenvalues of D might be highly degenerated.

However, this degeneracy is unstable under small perturbations of the domain [26]. In fact, if
the boundary of can be C k smoothly embedded in R2 with k > 4, then the eigenvalues En
of D are generically simple (see [26]).
Remark 7. In [17, theorem 1] Grushin has obtained a similar asymptotic expansion for the
ground state in mildly twisted tubes with transversal potential. He then proved, under certain
assumptions on , the absence of discrete eigenvalues for small enough. We would like to
mention that there is one important difference between our result and that of [14, 17]. Assume
that the boundary of is sufficiently regular (e.g. C 1 smooth) and replace the Dirichlet
boundary condition at
by the Neumann one; let us denote the resulting operator by HV ,N
Since V depends only on x, the eigenfunction associated with the lowest eigenvalue of H0V ,N
will be given by 1 (x, s) = c1 (x), where c is a constant. This follows from the fact that 1
is constant in the case of Neumann boundary conditions. Consequently we have 1 0
and therefore, using 1 as a test function, we find out that
   
inf HV ,N
inf H0V ,N .
This means that, contrary to the Dirichlet case, the lowest eigenvalue of H0V ,N will not be
removed by the twisting, even for very small V . On the other hand, the above analysis shows
that the effect on the embedded eigenvalues will typically occur also in the Neumann case,
since the eigenfunctions of H0V ,N associated with the embedded eigenvalues are not constant
in s.

5. A concrete model

In the previous section we have seen that the embedded eigenvalues under the influence of
twisting generically turn into resonances. However, theorem 1 does not a priori say that the
imaginary part of the resonances is strictly negative. In this section, we will show on a concrete
model that for mildly twisted waveguides one can guarantee the negativity of the imaginary
part of a chosen resonance.
To make this problem simpler we would like to consider a concrete model, in which V
acts as a Dirac delta potential. However, as the Dirac delta potential is obviously not dilation
analytic, see assumption B, we will approximate it by the sequence

V (x) = , > 0, (15)
2 cosh2 (x)
which converges to the delta function at zero as in the sense of distributions. Moreover,
to be able to give some quantitative results we assume that (x) = x.
8380 H Kovark and A Sacchetti

Proposition 1. Let (x) = x and assume that the embedded eigenvalue E = E2 + 1 of the
operator H0V is simple and that E2 E1 > 14 . Here V is given by (15). Then in the vicinity
of E there is an eigenvalue E(, ) of HV ( ) with the imaginary part given by
Im E(, ) = 2 a() + O(3 ), (16)
where

E2 E1 1
4
lim a() = |C1 | 2
, C1 = 1 , 2 L2 () . (17)
(E2 E1 )2
In particular, if C1 = 0 then the coefficient a() is strictly positive for large enough.

Remark 8. We note that with this choice of the essential spectrum of HV ( ) will depend
on . This fact is not usual in complex scaling methods; however, this inconvenience does not
affect the existence of the resonances since the correction of the essential spectrum is small
for small and thus the non-real eigenvalues of HV ( ) will stay far enough from its essential
spectrum. In fact, it could be possible to avoid this fact by choosing
(x) = x, x [X, X] and
(x) = 0, |x| > 2X, (18)
for some X  1. We note that with this choice of the essential spectrum of HV ( ) will not
depend on and, furthermore, since the wavefunction 1 decays very fast as |x| grows then,
in order to compute (31) and (33), we can practically take = 1 and = 0.

Remark 9. Equation (17) implies that if C1 = 0, then the imaginary part Im E(, ) will be
strictly negative for suitable values of end . Indeed, first we take large enough so that
a() > 0. Then we keep this fixed and take = () small enough so that the remainder
term O(3 ), which also depends on , becomes smaller than 2 a(). Then
Im E(, ) < 0, (19)
which means that the twisting pushes the eigenvalue E(, ) down in the complex plane,
making thus the lifetime of the corresponding resonance shorter.

Remark 10. Note that the assumption E2 E1 > 14 is made only for the sake of simplicity.
It guarantees that E is an embedded eigenvalue of H0V for any positive . If E2 E1 < 14 ,
= Ek + 1 for some k large enough such that
then we would have to consider an eigenvalue E

E is embedded.

Remark 11. The coefficient C1 depends on the geometry of . An integration by parts shows
that C1 =  1 , 2 L2 () . It is therefore easy to see that C1 = 0 for rotationally symmetric
. However, it is not a priori guaranteed that C1 = 0 whenever is not rotationally symmetric,
although we are not aware of any counter-example. Let us only mention that C1 = 0 for certain
domains . Indeed, for = [0, a] [0, b] with a > b > 0, we have
       
2 2 2
1 (y, z) = sin y sin z , 2 (y, z) = sin y sin z .
ab a b ab a b
An explicit calculation then shows that
4b
C1 = 1 , 2 L2 () = = 0.
3a
Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides 8381

5.1. Proof of proposition 1

Equation (16) follows directly from theorem 1. The rest of the proof will be given in two
steps.
Spectrum of h = x2 + V . Following [21, section 23] we set
  
1 2
t= 1 + 1 + . (20)
2
The eigenvalue problem h j = j j admits solutions
  2
2 2
j = (2j 1) + 1 + , 1
j <t +1 (21)
4
with associated eigenfunctions
 
j (x) = (1 2 )ej /2 F ej t, ej + t + 1, ej + 1, 12 (1 ) , (22)
where
  
j 1 2
= tanh(x), ej = = (2j 1) + 1 + , (23)
2
F denotes the hypergeometric function and ej t = j 1. In particular, when  1 then
t 21  1 and the spectrum of h consists of only one eigenvalue
  2
2 2 1
1 = 1 + 1 + + O( 1 ) (24)
4 4
with the associated normalized eigenvector
1 (x)
1 (x) = , 1 (x) = [1 tanh2 (x)]e1 /2 . (25)
 1 (x)L2 (R)
We recall that the absolute continuous spectrum of the operators
h = x2 + V (x) and h = x2 ,
where denotes the Diracs delta at x = 0, coincides with the positive real axis,
ac (h ) = ac (h ) = [0, +),
and that, see e.g. [1, theorem 3.2.3], h h as + in the norm resolvent sense:
lim r ( ) r ( ) = 0, Im > 0,

where r ( ) = [ h ]1 and r ( ) = [ h ]1 . Furthermore, making use of the same

arguments as in [1, section 3.2], it follows that for any rapidly decreasing test function
lim , [r ( ) r ( )]L2 (R) = 0, Im  0, (26)

uniformly for belonging to a compact set [a, b] i[0, c] for any a, b, c > 0.
Computation of the coefficient a. For we have
 
d (h ) = 1 = 14 + O( 1 ) . (27)
We take large enough so that for the set  = {E = Ej,n = j + En } of eigenvalues of H0V
holds
E1,1 = E1 1
4
+ O( 1 ) < E1 < E1,2 = E2 1
4
+ O( 1 ) < E2 . (28)
8382 H Kovark and A Sacchetti

Then we apply the perturbative theory to the embedded eigenvalue

E = E1,2 = E2 + 1 (29)
with the associated eigenvector
(x, y, z) = 1 (x)2 (y, z). (30)
In such a case k  = 2 and
 
 
 2
Im a2 = lim+ Im dk , r (E Ek i)dk L2 (R)  , U L2 (
)  (i)
V 1
(31)
0
k=1,2

where r ( ) is the resolvent of h and


dk (x) = k , UV L2 () . (32)
An integration by parts shows that 2 , 2 L2 () = 0. We thus get


, UV L2 (
) = 21 , x 1 L2 (R) 2 , 2 L2 () 1 ,
1 L2 (R) 2 , 2 L2 ()


2 1 , 2 1 L2 (R) 2 , 2 2 L2 ()
= C0 2 ,
where



C0 = 1 , 2 1 L2 (R) 2 , 2 2 L2 () = 2 , 2 2 L2 () .
Furthermore, from (32) we obtain that
d1 (x) = 2C1 x 1 2 C2 1 , d2 (x) = 2 C0 1 (33)
where


C1 = 1 , 2 L2 () and C2 = 1 , 2 2 L2 () .
Collecting all these facts and keeping in mind that E = E2 + 1 and 1 is the eigenfunction
of h with eigenvalue 1 we get, after some tedious, but straightforward calculations, that
 
2 
lim Im d2 , r (E E2 i)d2 L2 (R)  , UV L2 (
) (i)1 = 0.
0+

This implies

Im a2 = lim+ Imd1 , r (E E1 i)d1 L2 (R) (34)

0

= lim+ Im[42 |C1 |2 x 1 , r (E E1 i)x 1 ] + O(3 ). (35)

0

We now pass to the limit which implies

1 14 , 1 = 12 e|x|/2 , h h , (36)
where the last limit is reached in the norm resolvent sense. We recall also that the resolvent
[ h ]1 has the kernel given by
K (x, x
) = K0 (x, x
) + K1 (x, x
),
where
1 ik|xx
| 1 1

K0 (x, x
) = e , K1 (x, x
) = eik[|x|+|x |] , = k2, Im k > 0
2ki 2k 2k + i
(see [1]). In our case
= k 2 = E E1 i = E2 E1 + 1 i. (37)
Resonances in twisted quantum waveguides 8383

We will denote by K0 and K1 the integral operators with the kernels K0 (x, x
) and K1 (x, x
),
respectively. Note that x 1 (x) is an odd function, which implies that K1 x 1 0. Now
h h as in (26). Since E E1 is not an eigenvalue of h for any large enough (in fact
E E1 belongs to the absolute continuous spectrum of the operators h and h ) and d1 is
an exponentially decreasing function as |x| , we can pass to the limit replacing
r (E E1 i) on the rhs of (34) by K0 and 1 by :
lim Im a2 = lim lim+ Imd1 , r (E E1 i)d1 L2 (R)
0

= lim+ Im[42 |C1 |2 x , r (E E1 i)x ] + O(3 ), (38)

0

where the remainder term is uniform with respect to . An explicit computation then gives


 4 E2 E1 + 1
lim+ Im x , K0 x = . (39)
0 [1 + 4(E2 E1 + 1 )]2
In view of (36) and (39) we get

E2 E1 14
lim Im a2 = |C1 |
2 2
.
(E2 E1 )2
The proof is complete.

Acknowledgments

AS was partially supported by the INdAM project Mathematical Modeling and Numerical
Analysis of Quantum Systems with Applications to Nanosciences and by MIUR under the
project COFIN2005 Sistemi dinamici classici, quantistici e stocastici. HK is grateful to the
Department of Mathematics of the University of Modena for the warm hospitality extended to
him.

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