It can be shown using operator techniques that the non-Hermitian $PT$-symmetric quantum mechanical Hamiltonian with a ``wrong-sign'' quartic potential -gx⁴ is equivalent to a Hermitian Hamiltonian with a positive quartic potential together with a linear term. A na\"{}ve derivation of the same result in the path-integral approach misses this linear term. In a recent paper by Bender et al. it was pointed out that this term was in the nature of a parity anomaly and a more careful, discretized treatment of the path integral appeared to reproduce it successfully. However, on re-examination of this derivation we find that a yet more careful treatment is necessary, keeping terms that were ignored in that paper. An alternative, much simpler derivation is given using the additional potential that has been shown to appear whenever a change of variables to curvilinear coordinates is made in a functional integral.
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Jones et al. (2006) studied this question.
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