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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Evolution of superoscillatory initial data in several variables in uniform electric field

Yakir Aharonov, Fabrizio Colombo, Irene Sabadini, Daniele Carlo Struppa, Jeff Tollaksen

Published Mar 30, 2017• 25 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract A superoscillating function is defined by the property that it oscillates faster than its fastest Fourier components. This is mathematically possible because the coefficients of the linear combinations of the band limited components depend on the number of components. This phenomenon was discovered in the context of quantum physics, but it has important applications in a variety of areas, including metrology, antenna theory, and a new theory of superresolution in optics. In this paper we study the evolution of superoscillatory functions in uniform electric field by the Schrödinger equation where we assume that the Hamiltonian contains a even polynomial of the linear momentum p . This includes the classical case but also relativistic corrections of any order. Moreover, we extend our results to the case of several variables using the theory of superoscillating functions in several variables. We conclude by discussing a comparison of our work with the existing literature.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/aa66d9

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Abstract A superoscillating function is defined by the property that it oscillates faster than its fastest Fourier components. This is mathematically possible because the coefficients of the linear combinations of the band limited components depend on the number of components. This phenomenon was discovered in the context of quantum physics, but it has important applications in a variety of areas, including metrology, antenna theory, and a new theory of superresolution in optics. In this paper we study the evolution of superoscillatory functions in uniform electric field by the Schrödinger equation where we assume that the Hamiltonian contains a even polynomial of the linear momentum p . This includes the classical case but also relativistic corrections of any order. Moreover, we extend our results to the case of several variables using the theory of superoscillating functions in several variables. We conclude by discussing a comparison of our work with the existing literature.
Aharonov-Berry superoscillations are band-limited functions that oscillate faster than their fastest Fourier component. Superoscillations appear in several fields of science and technology, such as Aharonov’s weak measurement in quantum mechanics, in optics, and in signal processing. An important issue is the study of the evolution of superoscillations using the Schrödinger equation when the initial datum is a weak value. Some superoscillatory functions are not square integrable, but they are real analytic functions that can be extended to entire holomorphic functions. This fact leads to the study of the continuity of a class of convolution operators acting on suitable spaces of entire functions with growth conditions. In this paper, we study the evolution of a superoscillatory initial datum in a uniform magnetic field. Moreover, we collect some results on convolution operators that appear in the theory of superoscillatory functions using a direct approach that allows the convolution operators to have non-constant coefficients of polynomial type.
Superoscillating functions are band-limited functions that can oscillate faster than their fastest Fourier component. These functions appear in various fields of science and technology, in particular they were discovered in quantum mechanics in the context of weak values introduced by Y. Aharonov and collaborators. The evolution problem of superoscillatory functions as initial conditions for the Schrödinger equation is intensively studied nowadays and the supershift property of the solution of Schrödinger equation encodes the persistence of superoscillatory phenomenon during the evolution. In this paper, we prove that the evolution of a superoscillatory initial datum for spinning particles in a magnetic field has the supershift property. Our techniques are based on the exact propagator of spinning particles, the associated infinite order differential operators and their continuity on suitable spaces of entire functions with growth conditions.
In the past 50 years, quantum physicists have discovered, and experimentally demonstrated, a phenomenon which they termed superoscillations . Aharonov and his collaborators showed that superoscillations naturally arise when dealing with weak values, a notion that provides a fundamentally different way to regard measurements in quantum physics. From a mathematical point of view, superoscillating functions are a superposition of small Fourier components with a bounded Fourier spectrum, which result, when appropriately summed, in a shift that can be arbitrarily large, and well outside the spectrum. Purpose of this work is twofold: on one hand we provide a self-contained survey of the existing literature, in order to offer a systematic mathematical approach to superoscillations; on the other hand, we obtain some new and unexpected results, by showing that superoscillating sequences can be seen of as solutions to a large class of convolution equations and can therefore be treated within the theory of Analytically Uniform spaces. In particular, we will also discuss the persistence of the superoscillatory behavior when superoscillating sequences are taken as initial values of the Schrödinger equation and other equations.
A superoscillatory function—that is, a band-limited function f(x) oscillating faster than its fastest Fourier component—is taken to be the initial state of a freely-evolving quantum wavefunction ψ. The superoscillations persist for unexpectedly long times, but eventually disappear through the interaction of contributions to ψ with complex momenta that are exponentially disparate in magnitude; this is established by applying the asymptotics of integrals, supported by numerics. f(x) can alternatively be regarded as the wave generated by a diffraction grating, propagating paraxially and without evanescence as ψ in the space beyond. The persistence of superoscillations is then interpreted as the propagation of sub-wavelength structure farther into the field than the more familiar evanescent waves.
Weak measurements and the theory of weak values have a very deep meaning in quantum mechanics, and new phenomena associated with them has recently been observed experimentally. This theory has also directly led to the notion of superoscillating sequences of functions. In this paper we consider Cauchy problems with superoscillatory initial conditions (in particular, the Cauchy problem for the Schrödinger equation and some of its variations), and we give conditions under which the superoscillations persist in time. Our work is based on results from the theory of formal solutions to Cauchy problems and on the study of the specific growth of superoscillatory sequences, when regarded as functions of a complex variable. There are two main aims of this paper: one is to explain the mathematical tools that are necessary to study superoscillations, also repeating a few results that we have already proved in other papers in order to clarify the strategy. The second aim is to show that our technique applies to a large class of problems, showing under which conditions the superoscillatory phenomenon persists. Finally, we point out that our strategy can be applied also to non-constant coefficients differential equations as the quantum harmonic oscillator.
Abstract A superoscillatory function is one in which the function oscillates faster than its fastest Fourier component. Superoscillations are now a well-established feature of certain types of wavepacket. Here we discuss quantum superoscillations in a wavepacket evolving according to the harmonic oscillator hamiltonian. The evolution of the wavepacket is investigated using an expansion in terms of eigenfunctions and in terms of the propagator using both an exact integration, and a saddle point approximation. The creation and decay of superoscillations as well as the barrier between them and normal oscillations is shown to depend on the behaviour of the saddle points. The work reported here is the result of a student project and we argue that super oscillations makes an excellent topic with which to introduce students to theoretical research.