Physics Letters B 791 (2019) 265–269
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Supersymmetry and the Riemann zeros on the critical line
Ashok Das
a
, Pushpa Kalauni
b,∗
a
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester , Rochester, NY 14627-0171, USA
b
Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
23 December 2018
Received
in revised form 1 February 2019
Accepted
22 February 2019
Available
online 5 March 2019
Editor: M.
Cveti
ˇ
c
Keywords:
Riemann
hypothesis
Supersymmetry
Riemann
zeta function
Riemann
zeros
We propose a new way of studying the Riemann zeros on the critical line using ideas from supersym-
metry.
Namely, we construct a supersymmetric quantum mechanical model whose energy eigenvalues
correspond to the Riemann zeta function in the strip 0 < Re s < 1(in the complex parameter space) and
show that the zeros on the critical line arise naturally from the vanishing ground state energy condition
in this model.
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
Riemann [1] generalized Euler’s zeta function to the entire com-
plex
space of parameters in three essential steps. First, he extended
the series representation of the zeta function to complex parame-
ters
as
ζ(s ) =
∞
n=1
1
n
s
, s = σ +iλ, (σ ,λreal), Re s > 1. (1)
This series representation can be written as a product of factors
involving only prime numbers and the zeta function in (1) has
an integral representation in terms of the Mellin transform of the
Bose-Einstein distribution function [2]. In the second step, he ex-
pressed
the zeta function in (1)in terms of the alternating zeta
function as
ζ(s ) =
1
1 − 2
1−s
η(s)
=
1
1 − 2
1−s
∞
n=1
(−1)
n+1
n
s
, Re s > 0, s = 1. (2)
This leads to an integral representation of the zeta function in
terms of the Mellin transform of the Fermi-Dirac distribution func-
tion
[2]. In this way, Riemann had defined the zeta function on
the right half of the complex parameter space except for the point
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
address: pushpakalauni60@gmail.com (P. Kalauni).
s = 1. In order to extend it to the left half of the plane, Riemann
derived two equivalent functional relations (we give only one, the
other can be obtained from this by letting s → 1 − s)
ζ(s ) = 2(2π)
s−1
sin
π s
2
(1 − s)ζ (1 − s), Re s < 1. (3)
This, therefore, generalizes the zeta function to the entire complex
plane.
The zeta function is an analytic function [3,4] which has a sim-
ple
pole at s = 1with residue 1(the pole structure is already
manifest in (2)). It vanishes for s =−2k where k ≥ 1 which can
be seen from (3). These zeros are known as “trivial” zeros of the
zeta function since they arise from the kinematic trigonometric
factor in (3) and are the only zeros for Re s ≤ 0(ζ(0) =−
1
2
). Fur-
thermore,
from the representation of the zeta function in terms of
products involving prime numbers, it can be shown that the zeta
function has no zero for Re s > 1(since none of the factors can
vanish there). Therefore, any other “non trivial” zero of the zeta
function must lie in the strip
0 < Re s < 1. (4)
Riemann conjectured [1] that all other zeros of the zeta function
lie on the critical line Re s =
1
2
, namely,
ζ(
1
2
+iλ
∗
) = 0, (5)
where λ
∗
denotes the location of a zero on the critical line. This
is known as the Riemann hypothesis and so far many zeros have
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2019.02.040
0370-2693/
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.