Position dependent mass Schrödinger equation and isospectral potentials: Intertwining operator approach

Abstract

Here, we have studied first- and second-order intertwining approaches to generate isospectral partner potentials of position dependent (effective) mass Schrödinger equation. The second-order intertwiner is constructed directly by taking it as second-order linear differential operator with position dependent coefficients, and the system of equations arising from the intertwining relationship is solved for the coefficients by taking an ansatz. A complete scheme for obtaining general solution is obtained, which is valid for any arbitrary potential and mass function. The proposed technique allows us to generate isospectral potentials with the following spectral modifications: (i) to add new bound state(s), (ii) to remove bound state(s), and (iii) to leave the spectrum unaffected. To explain our findings with the help of an illustration, we have used point canonical transformation to obtain the general solution of the position dependent mass Schrodinger equation corresponding to a potential and mass function. It is shown that our results are consistent with the formulation of type A N-fold supersymmetry [T. Tanaka, J. Phys. A 39, 219 (2006); A. Gonzalez-Lopez and T. Tanaka, J. Phys. A 39, 3715 (2006)] for the particular cases N=1 and N=2, respectively.