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
- Alexey Vyacheslavovich Gorshkov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0509-3421)
- Michael J. Gullans (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3974-2987)
- Xuesen Na (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8845-0644)
- Yidan Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7815-4710)
- Susanne F. Yelin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1655-9151)
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
- 0.00