Degeneracy of Resonances: Branch Point and Branch Cuts in Parameter Space

Abstract

The rich phenomenology of crossings and anticrossings of energies and widths, observed in an isolated doublet of resonances when one control parameter is varied, is fully explained in terms of the topological properties of the energy hypersurfaces close to the degeneracy point. The hypersurface representing the complex resonance eigenvalues, as functions of the control parameters, has an algebraic branch point of rank one, and branch cuts in its real and imaginary parts, in parameter space. Associated with this singularity in parameter space, the scattering matrix, Sl(E), and the Green’s function, Gl(+)(k; r,r'), have one double pole in the unphysical sheet of the complex energy plane. We characterize the universal unfolding or deformation of any degeneracy point of two unbound states in parameter space by means of a universal 2-parameter family of functions which is contact equivalent to the pole position function of the isolated doublet of resonances at the exceptional point and includes all small perturbations of the degeneracy condition up to contact equivalence.