No abstract

Further analysis of the connected moments expansion 2 Abstract. By means of simple quantum-mechanical models we show that under certain conditions the main assumptions of the connected moments expansion (CMX) are no longer valid. In particular we consider two-level systems, the harmonic oscillator and the pure quartic oscillator. Although derived from such simple models, we think that the results of this investigation may be of utility in future applications of the approach to realistic problems. We show that a straightforward analysis of the CMX exponential parameters may provide a clear indication of the success of the approach.

The system describing time-harmonic motions of a two-layer fluid in the linearised shallow-water approximation is considered. It is assumed that the depth is constant, with a cylindrical protrusion (an underwater ridge) of small height. For obliquely incident waves, the system reduces to a pair of coupled ordinary differential equations. The values of frequency for which wave propagation in the unperturbed system is possible are bounded from below by a cutoff, to the left of which no propagating modes exist. Under the perturbation, a trapped mode appears to the left of the cutoff and, if a certain geometric requirement is imposed upon the shape of the perturbation (for example, if the ridge is a rectangular barrier of certain width), a trapped mode appears whose frequency is embedded in the continuous spectrum. When these geometric conditions are not satisfied, the embedded trapped mode transforms into a complex pole of the reflection and transmission coefficients of the corresponding scattering problem, and the phenomenon of almost total reflection is observed when the frequency coincides with the real part of the pole. Exact formulae for the trapped modes are obtained explicitly in the form of infinite series in powers of the small parameter characterising the perturbation. The results provide a theoretical understanding of analogous phenomena observed numerically in the literature for the full problem for the potentials in a two-layer fluid in the presence of submerged cylinders, and furnish explicit formulae for the frequencies at which total reflection occurs and the trapped modes exist.

The behavior of bound states in asymmetric cross, T and L shaped configurations is considered. Because of the symmetries of the wavefunctions, the analysis can be reduced to the case of an electron localized at the intersection of two orthogonal crossed wires of different width. Numerical calculations show that the fundamental mode of this system remains bound for the widths that we have been able to study directly; moreover, the extrapolation of the results obtained for finite widths suggests that this state remains bound even when the width of one arm becomes infinitesimal. We provide a qualitative argument which explains this behavior and that can be generalized to the lowest energy states in each symmetry class. In the case of odd-odd states of the cross we find that the lowest mode is bounded when the width of the two arms is the same and stays bound up to a critical value of the ratio between the widths; in the case of the even-odd states we find that the lowest mode is unbound up to a critical value of the ratio between the widths. Our qualitative arguments suggest that the bound state survives as the width of the vertical arm becomes infinitesimal.