Landscape of scattering universality with general dispersion relations

Universality in physics describes how disparate systems can exhibit identical low-energy behavior. Here, we reveal a rich landscape of new universal scattering phenomena governed by the interplay between an interaction and a system's density of states. We investigate one-dimensional scattering with dispersion relations $ε(k)=|k|^m$ and $ε(k)=\operatorname{sgn}(k)|k|^m$ for any real $m>1$. For emitter scattering and separable potentials, including contact potentials, we classify the zero-energy $S$-matrix limits. These universal $S$-matrix fixed points depend solely on the dispersion exponent $m$ and a finite set of integers characterizing the low-momentum interaction structure. This classification extends far beyond the standard quadratic-dispersion case ($m=2$). We further derive a generalized Levinson's theorem relating the total winding of the $S$-matrix determinant to the number of bound states. Finally, for contact potentials and analytic monomial dispersions, we analyze the leading low-energy expansion of the scattering phase near these fixed points and extract the corresponding Wigner-delay scaling. Our findings are directly relevant to synthetic quantum systems, where engineered dispersion relations in atomic arrays and photonic crystals offer a platform to explore these universal behaviors.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Physical Review Letters
Published
2026-10-26
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/qz6q-ztzn
Primary Topic
Spectral Theory in Mathematical Physics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Landscape of scattering universality with general dispersion relations

Alexey Vyacheslavovich Gorshkov, Michael J. Gullans, Xuesen Na, Yidan Wang et al.
Physical Review Letters
Spectral Theory in Mathematical Physics
article

Landscape of scattering universality with general dispersion relations

Alexey Vyacheslavovich Gorshkov, Michael J. Gullans, Xuesen Na, Yidan Wang, Susanne F. Yelin
article en

Abstract

Universality in physics describes how disparate systems can exhibit identical low-energy behavior. Here, we reveal a rich landscape of new universal scattering phenomena governed by the interplay between an interaction and a system's density of states. We investigate one-dimensional scattering with dispersion relations $ε(k)=|k|^m$ and $ε(k)=\operatorname{sgn}(k)|k|^m$ for any real $m>1$. For emitter scattering and separable potentials, including contact potentials, we classify the zero-energy $S$-matrix limits. These universal $S$-matrix fixed points depend solely on the dispersion exponent $m$ and a finite set of integers characterizing the low-momentum interaction structure. This classification extends far beyond the standard quadratic-dispersion case ($m=2$). We further derive a generalized Levinson's theorem relating the total winding of the $S$-matrix determinant to the number of bound states. Finally, for contact potentials and analytic monomial dispersions, we analyze the leading low-energy expansion of the scattering phase near these fixed points and extract the corresponding Wigner-delay scaling. Our findings are directly relevant to synthetic quantum systems, where engineered dispersion relations in atomic arrays and photonic crystals offer a platform to explore these universal behaviors.

Physical Review Letters
Openalex Percentile: Top 85%
Spectral Theory in Mathematical Physics
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