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  • Open Access

Analytical singular-value structure of analytic-continuation kernels from Slepian information theory

Masayuki Ohzeki*

  • Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan; Department of Physics, Institute of Science Tokyo, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan; Research and Education Institute for Semiconductors and Informatics, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto 860-8555, Japan; and Sigma-i Co., Ltd., Tokyo 108-0075, Japan

  • *Contact author: mohzeki@tohoku.ac.jp

APS Open Sci. 1, 000145 – Published 21 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/8yw5-dhd4

Abstract

Analytic continuation from imaginary-time Green’s functions to real-frequency spectra is a central ill-posed inverse problem in quantum many-body physics. We show that the thermal kernel admits an analytical generalized singular-value structure once its purely dynamical part is separated from the statistical weight imposed by the heat bath. The dynamical kernel is the imaginary-bandwidth continuation of Slepian’s finite Fourier transform and is governed by the same Sturm-Liouville algebra that yields prolate spheroidal wave functions. Fermionic and bosonic statistics then enter as gauge transformations of the frequency-space inner product, giving a generalized singular system and self-adjoint effective potentials in the corresponding weighted space. The Shannon number, Nc=βωmax/π, fixes the upper information capacity of this pure Laplace channel. Finally, the optimal sampling points are obtained as eigenvalues of a Legendre colleague matrix, giving a deterministic compressed-sensing grid without iterative root searches.

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