Threshold conditions, energy spectrum and bands generated by locally periodic Dirac comb potentials

Abstract

We derive expressions for polynomials governing the threshold conditions for different types of locally periodic Dirac comb potentials comprising of attractive and combination of attractive and repulsive delta potential terms confined symmetrically inside a one dimensional box of fixed length. The roots of these polynomials specify the conditions on the potential parameters in order to generate threshold energy bound states. The mathematical and numerical methods used by us were first formulated in our earlier works and it is also very briefly summarized in this paper. We report a number of mathematical results pertaining to the threshold conditions and these are useful in controlling the number of negative energy states as desired. We further demonstrate the correlation between the distribution of roots of these polynomials and negative energy eigenvalues. Using these results as basis, we investigate the energy bands in the positive energy spectrum for the above specified Dirac comb potentials and also for the corresponding repulsive case. In the case of attractive Dirac comb the base energy of the each band excluding the first band coincides with specific eigenvalue of the confining box whereas in the repulsive case it coincides with the band top. We deduce systematic correlation between band gaps, band spreads and box eigenvalues and explain the physical reason for the vanishing of band pattern at higher energies. In the case of Dirac comb comprising of orderly arranged attractive and repulsive delta potentials, specific box eigenvalues occur in the middle of each band excluding the first band. From our study we find that by controlling the number and strength parameters of delta terms in the Dirac comb and the size of confining box it is possible to generate desired types of band formations. We believe the results from our systematic analysis are useful and relevant in the study of various one dimensional systems of physical interest in areas like nanoscience.