• Accepted Paper

Landscape of scattering universality with general dispersion relations

Yidan Wang, Xuesen Na, Michael J. Gullans, Susanne F. Yelin, and Alexey V. Gorshkov

Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 26 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/qz6q-ztzn

Abstract

Universality in physics describes how disparate systems can exhibit identical low-energy behavior. Here, we reveal a rich landscape of new universal scattering phenomena governed by the interplay between an interaction and a system’s density of states. We investigate one-dimensional scattering with dispersion relations ϵ(k)=|k|m and ϵ(k)=sgn(k)|k|m for any real m>1. For emitter scattering and separable potentials, including contact potentials, we classify the zero-energy S-matrix limits. These universal S-matrix fixed points depend solely on the dispersion exponent m and a finite set of integers characterizing the low-momentum interaction structure. This classification extends far beyond the standard quadratic-dispersion case (m=2). We further derive a generalized Levinson’s theorem relating the total winding of the S-matrix determinant to the number of bound states. Finally, for contact potentials and analytic monomial dispersions, we analyze the leading low-energy expansion of the scattering phase near these fixed points and extract the corresponding Wigner-delay scaling. Our findings are directly relevant to synthetic quantum systems, where engineered dispersion relations in atomic arrays and photonic crystals offer a platform to explore these universal behaviors.

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