Self-isospectral periodic potentials and supersymmetric quantum mechanics

Abstract

We discuss supersymmetric quantum mechanical models with periodic potentials. The important new feature is that it is possible for both isospectral potentials to support zero modes, in contrast with the standard nonperiodic case where either one or neither (but not both) of the isospectral pair has a zero mode. Thus it is possible to have supersymmetry unbroken and yet also have a vanishing Witten index. We present some explicit exactly soluble examples for which the isospectral potentials have identical band spectra, and which are “self-isospectral” in the sense that the potentials have identical shape, but are translated by one half-period relative to one another.