Analysis of the ground-state energy eigenvalues of fractal quantum potentials

Abstract

Traditional models in solid-state physics study the motion of electrons in a periodic lattice. Recent developments in the physics of graphene allow scientists to construct two-dimensional structures with fractal geometry and conduct experiments on them. Recently, some theoretical approaches have been developed to study the optical and electrical properties of semiconductor layers with self-similar characteristics. This newly emerged direction in solid-state physics inspired us to focus on studying the quantum mechanical properties of fractal potentials. We first introduce sequences of potential wells converging towards different fractal structures. Then, we calculate the ground-state energy eigenvalues of the time-independent Schrödinger equation for these potential functions using two numerical methods, the Numerov and analytical transfer matrix method, to demonstrate the effect of the potential structure morphology and properties on the behavior of the energy eigenvalues. Ground-state energies for the generalized Cantor set, the Smith–Volterra–Cantor set, a multi-level Cantor set and the Weierstrass function will be calculated and compared. We will deal with the question of how the ground state of these potential functions changes as the fractal generator is applied, and we show that properties such as the Lebesgue measure of the Cantor potentials and the Hausdorff dimension of the Weierstrass function strongly control the convergence of energy eigenvalues.