Journal of High Energy Physics (Jan 2019)

TBA equations and resurgent Quantum Mechanics

  • Katsushi Ito,
  • Marcos Mariño,
  • Hongfei Shu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01(2019)228
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2019, no. 1
pp. 1 – 45

Abstract

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Abstract We derive a system of TBA equations governing the exact WKB periods in one-dimensional Quantum Mechanics with arbitrary polynomial potentials. These equations provide a generalization of the ODE/IM correspondence, and they can be regarded as the solution of a Riemann-Hilbert problem in resurgent Quantum Mechanics formulated by Voros. Our derivation builds upon the solution of similar Riemann-Hilbert problems in the study of BPS spectra in N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 gauge theories and of minimal surfaces in AdS. We also show that our TBA equations, combined with exact quantization conditions, provide a powerful method to solve spectral problems in Quantum Mechanics. We illustrate our general analysis with a detailed study of PT-symmetric cubic oscillators and quartic oscillators.

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