0 v 1 2 4 O ct 1 99 4 Spectrum Degeneracy of General ( p = 2 ) – Parasupersymmetric Quantum Mechanics and Parasupersymmetric Topological Invariants

A thorough analysis of the general features of (p = 2) parasupersymmetric quantum mechanics is presented. It is shown that for both Rubakov–Spiridonov and Beckers–Debergh formulations of (p = 2)parasupersymmetric quantum mechanics, the degeneracy structure of the energy spectrum can be derived using the defining parasuperalgebras. Thus the results of the present article is independent of the details of the Hamiltonian. In fact, they are valid for arbitrary systems based on arbitrary dimensional coordinate manifolds. In particular, the Rubakov–Spiridonov (R-S) and Beckers–Debergh (B-D) systems possess identical degeneracy structures. For a subclass of R-S (alternatively B-D) systems, a new topological invariant is introduced. This is a counterpart of the Witten index of the supersymmetric quantum mechanics. ∗Supported by Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship.