Irreversible evolution of a wave packet in the rigged-Hilbert-space quantum mechanics

It is well known that a state with complex energy cannot be the eigenstate of a self-adjoint operator, such as the Hamiltonian. Resonances, i.e., states with exponentially decaying observables, are not vectors belonging to the conventional Hilbert space. One can describe these resonances in an unusual mathematical formalism based on the so-called rigged Hilbert space (RHS). In the RHS, the states with complex energy are denoted as Gamow vectors (GVs), and they model decay processes. We study the GVs of the reversed harmonic oscillator, and we analytically and numerically investigate the unstable evolution of wave packets. We introduce the background function to study initial data that are not composed only by a summation of GVs, and we analyze different wave packets belonging to specific function spaces. Our work furnishes support for the idea that irreversible wave propagation can be investigated using rigged-Hilbert-space quantum mechanics and provides insight for the experimental investigation of irreversible dynamics.