Anharmonic Oscillators in the Complex Plane, $\boldsymbol{\mathcal{PT}}$-symmetry,and Real Eigenvalues

For integers m ≥ 3 and 1 ≤ ℓ ≤ m − 1, we study the eigenvalue problems − u ^″(z) + ( − 1)^ℓ(iz) ^m  − P(iz)]u(z) = λu(z) with the boundary conditions that u(z) decays to zero as z tends to infinity along the rays argz=-\fracp2±\frac(l+1)pm+2\arg z=-\frac{\pi}{2}\pm \frac{(\ell+1)\pi}{m+2} in the complex plane, where P is a polynomial of degree at most m − 1. We provide asymptotic expansions of the eigenvalues λ _n . Then we show that if the eigenvalue problem is PT\mathcal{PT}-symmetric, then the eigenvalues are all real and positive with at most finitely many exceptions. Moreover, we show that when gcd(m,l)=1\gcd(m,\ell)=1, the eigenvalue problem has infinitely many real eigenvalues if and only if one of its translations or itself is PT\mathcal{PT}-symmetric. Also, we will prove some other interesting direct and inverse spectral results.