Pseudo-Hermiticity for a class of nondiagonalizable Hamiltonians

We give two characterization theorems for pseudo-Hermitian (possibly nondiagonalizable) Hamiltonians with a discrete spectrum that admit a block-diagonalization with finite-dimensional diagonal blocks. In particular, we prove that for such an operator H the following statements are equivalent: (1) H is pseudo-Hermitian; (2) the spectrum of H consists of real and/or complex-conjugate pairs of eigenvalues and the geometric multiplicity and the dimension of the diagonal blocks for the complex-conjugate eigenvalues are identical; (3) H is Hermitian with respect to a positive-semidefinite inner product. We further discuss the relevance of our findings for the merging of a complex-conjugate pair of eigenvalues of diagonalizable pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians in general, and the PT-symmetric Hamiltonians and the effective Hamiltonian for a certain closed FRW minisuperspace quantum cosmological model in particular. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.