General Approach to the Quantum Kicked Particle in a Magnetic Field: Quantum-Antiresonance Transition

The quantum kicked particle in a magnetic field is studied in a weak-chaos regime under realistic conditions, i.e., for {\em general} values of the conserved coordinate $x_{{\rm c}}$ of the cyclotron orbit center. The system exhibits spectral structures [``Hofstadter butterflies'' (HBs)] and quantum diffusion depending sensitively on $x_{{\rm c}}$. Most significant changes take place when $x_{{\rm c}}$ approaches the value at which quantum antiresonance (exactly periodic recurrences) can occur: the HB essentially ``doubles'' and the quantum-diffusion coefficient $D(x_{{\rm c}})$ is strongly reduced. An explanation of these phenomena, including an approximate formula for $D(x_{{\rm c}})$ in a class of wave packets, is given on the basis of an effective Hamiltonian which is derived as a power expansion in a small parameter. The global quantum diffusion of a two-dimensional wave packet for all $x_{{\rm c}}$ is briefly considered.Comment: Revised Version, publishe

Acceleration of particles by rotating black holes: near-horizon geometry and kinematics

Nowadays, the effect of infinite energy in the centre of mass frame due to near-horizon collisions attracts much attention.We show generality of the effect combining two seemingly completely different approaches based on properties of a particle with respect to its local light cone and calculating its velocity in the locally nonrotaing frame directly. In doing so, we do not assume that particles move along geodesics. Usually, a particle reaches a horizon having the velocity equals that of light. However, there is also case of "critical" particles for which this is not so. It is just the pair of usual and critical particles that leads to the effect under discussion. The similar analysis is carried out for massless particles. Then, critical particles are distinguishable due to the finiteness of local frequency. Thus, both approach based on geometrical and kinematic properties of particles moving near the horizon, reveal the universal character of the effect.Comment: 8 page

General approach to potentials with two known levels

We present the general form of potentials with two given energy levels $E_{1}$, $E_{2}$ and find corresponding wave functions. These entities are expressed in terms of one function $\xi (x)$ and one parameter $\Delta E=E_{2}$-$E_{1}$. We show how the quantum numbers of both levels depend on properties of the function $\xi (x)$. Our approach does not need resorting to the technique of supersymmetric (SUSY) quantum mechanics but automatically generates both the potential and superpotential.Comment: 14 pages, REVTeX 3.0. In v.2 misprints and inaccuracies in presentation corrected, discussion of 3-dim. case added. In v.3 misprint in eq. 41, several typos and inaccuracies in English corrected. To be published in J. of Phys. A: Math. Ge

Traversable wormholes: minimum violation of null energy condition revisited

It was argued in literature that traversable wormholes can exist with arbitrarily small violation of null energy conditions. We show that if the amount of exotic material near the wormhole throat tends to zero, either this leads to a horn instead of a wormhole or the throat approaches the horizon in such a way that infnitely large stresses develop on the throat.Comment: 12 pages. To appear in PR

Coherent Acceleration of Material Wavepackets

We study the quantum dynamics of a material wavepacket bouncing off a modulated atomic mirror in the presence of a gravitational field. We find the occurrence of coherent accelerated dynamics for atoms. The acceleration takes place for certain initial phase space data and within specific windows of modulation strengths. The realization of the proposed acceleration scheme is within the range of present day experimental possibilities.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, NASA "Quantum-to-Cosmos" conference proceedings to be published in IJMP

Entropy of an extremal electrically charged thin shell and the extremal black hole

There is a debate as to what is the value of the the entropy $S$ of extremal black holes. There are approaches that yield zero entropy $S=0$, while there are others that yield the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy $S=A_+/4$, in Planck units. There are still other approaches that give that $S$ is proportional to $r_+$ or even that $S$ is a generic well-behaved function of $r_+$. Here $r_+$ is the black hole horizon radius and $A_+=4\pi r_+^2$ is its horizon area. Using a spherically symmetric thin matter shell with extremal electric charge, we find the entropy expression for the extremal thin shell spacetime. When the shell's radius approaches its own gravitational radius, and thus turns into an extremal black hole, we encounter that the entropy is $S=S(r_+)$, i.e., the entropy of an extremal black hole is a function of $r_+$ alone. We speculate that the range of values for an extremal black hole is $0\leq S(r_+) \leq A_+/4$.Comment: 11 pages, minor changes, added references, matches the published versio

Quasi-exactly solvable quartic Bose Hamiltonians

We consider Hamiltonians, which are even polynomials of the forth order with the respect to Bose operators. We find subspaces, preserved by the action of Hamiltonian These subspaces, being finite-dimensional, include, nonetheless, states with an \QTR{it}{infinite} number of quasi-particles, corresponding to the original Bose operators. The basis functions look rather simple in the coherent state representation and are expressed in terms of the degenerate hypergeometric function with respect to the complex variable labeling the representation. In some particular degenerate cases they turn (up to the power factor) into the trigonometric or hyperbolic functions, Bessel functions or combinations of the exponent and Hermit polynomials. We find explicitly the relationship between coefficients at different powers of Bose operators that ensure quasi-exact solvability of Hamiltonian.Comment: 21 pages, REVTeX 3.0, no figures. In v.2 couple of misprints in English corrected. To be published in J. Phys. A: Math. Ge

Truly naked spherically-symmetric and distorted black holes

We demonstrate the existence of spherically-symmetric truly naked black holes (TNBH) for which the Kretschmann scalar is finite on the horizon but some curvature components including those responsible for tidal forces as well as the energy density $\bar{\rho}$ measured by a free-falling observer are infinite. We choose a rather generic power-like asymptotics for the metric functions and analyze possible types of a horizon depending on the behavior of curvature components in the free-falling frame. It is also shown in a general case of distorted black holes that $\bar{\rho}$ and tidal forces are either both finite or both infinite. The general approach developed in the article includes previously found examples and, in particular, TNBHs with an infinite area of a horizon. The fact that the detection of singularity depends on a frame may be relevant for a more accurate definition of the cosmic censorship conjecture. TNBHs may be considered as a new example of so-called non-scalar singularities for which the scalar curvature invariants are finite but some components of the Riemann tensor may diverge in certain frames.Comment: 18 pages. 2 last sentences on quantum backreaction modified. Typos corrected. To appear in PR