The states of a planar oscillator are separated to a vibrational mode, containing a zero-point energy, and a rotational mode without the zero-point energy, but having a conserved angular momentum.On the basis of the analysis of properties of models of rigid and semirigid rotators, the theory of soft rotators is formulated where the harmonic attractive force is balanced only by the centrifugal force.As examples a Coulomb rotator (the Bohr model) and a magneto-harmonic rotator (the Fock-Landau levels) are considered.Disappearance of the radial speed in the model of a magneto-harmonic rotator is taken as a defining property of a pure rotational motion in the harmonic potential.After the exception of energies of the magnetic and spin decompositions, specific to magnetic fields, one turns to a simple and general model of a plane harmonic rotator (circular oscillator without radial speed) where kinetic energy is reduced to the purely rotational energy.Energy levels of the harmonic rotator have the same frequency and are twice degenerate, the energy spectrum is equidistant.In the ground state there is no zeropoint energy from rotational modes, and the zero-point energy of vibrational modes can be compensated by spin effects or symmetries of the system.In this case the operators of observables vanish the ground state, i.e. are "strongly" normally ordered.In a chain of harmonic rotators collective rotations around a common axis lead to transverse waves, at quantization of which there appear quasi-particles and holes carrying an angular momentum.In the chain SU (2) appears as a group of symmetry of a rotator.
The states of a planar oscillator are separated to a vibrational mode, containing a zero-point energy, and a rotational mode without the zero-point energy, but having a conserved angular momentum.On the basis of the analysis of properties of models of rigid and semirigid rotators, the theory of soft rotators is formulated where the harmonic attractive force is balanced only by the centrifugal force.As examples a Coulomb rotator (the Bohr model) and a magneto-harmonic rotator (the Fock-Landau levels) are considered.Disappearance of the radial speed in the model of a magneto-harmonic rotator is taken as a defining property of a pure rotational motion in the harmonic potential.After the exception of energies of the magnetic and spin decompositions, specific to magnetic fields, one turns to a simple and general model of a plane harmonic rotator (circular oscillator without radial speed) where kinetic energy is reduced to the purely rotational energy.Energy levels of the harmonic rotator have the same frequency and are twice degenerate, the energy spectrum is equidistant.In the ground state there is no zeropoint energy from rotational modes, and the zero-point energy of vibrational modes can be compensated by spin effects or symmetries of the system.In this case the operators of observables vanish the ground state, i.e. are "strongly" normally ordered.In a chain of harmonic rotators collective rotations around a common axis lead to transverse waves, at quantization of which there appear quasi-particles and holes carrying an angular momentum.In the chain SU (2) appears as a group of symmetry of a rotator.
\n We have formulated a model of a complex (two-dimensional) quantum harmonic oscillator. All dynamical physical variables are expressed in terms of the creation and annihilation operators, viz., $a_{z}, \\bar{a}_{z}\\ {\\rm and} \\ a_{\\bar{z}}, \\bar{a}_{\\bar{z}} $. The Hamiltonian of the system is $H_{z\\bar{z}} = (\\bar{a}_{z}a_{z} + 1) + \\omega L_{z} $, where ω is the oscillator frequency and $L_{z} = \\frac{\\hbar }{2}\\,(\\bar{a}_{\\bar{z}} a_{\\bar{z}}-\\bar{a}_{z}a_{z}) $ is the orbital angular momentum. The oscillator is found to be described by a conserved orbital angular momentum (Lz) besides energy. While the ground-state wave function is real, all excited states are complex and degenerate. The oscillator in these states carry a quantum of charge of $e^{{\\ast}} = \\frac{n}{2n\\pm1} e $. These degenerate wave functions are eigenstates of the orbital angular momentum with eigenvalues nℏ and −nℏ, where h=2πℏ is the Planck's constant and n=1, 2, … . The two wave functions are degenerate with energy En=(n+1)ℏω. The comparison with Landau level reveals that in the presence of the magnetic field, B, where ω is equal to the cyclotron frequency, the current moment is quantized and is proportional to the square root of the magnetic field, i.e., ${\\cal I}_{n}\\propto n e \\sqrt{B} $.\n
The classical problem of planar cyclotron motion of a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field possesses symmetries which account for the ``accidental'' degeneracies of the analogous nonrelativistic Schrödinger equation, as found by Johnson and Lippman. The essentially quadratic nature of the Hamiltonian is not changed by considering the particle moving in a harmonic oscillator potential, a ``Zeeman effect'' for the harmonic oscillator. The transitions to the limiting cases of a weak magnetic field (pure harmonic oscillator) or a strong field (pure cyclotron motion) involve the contraction of the corresponding symmetry groups, yielding Larmor precession of the oscillator orbits in the first case, and the drift of the cyclotron orbit in the second. The constants of the motion generate the unitary unimodular group SU2 in all cases except for pure cyclotron motion, in which case one obtains the commutation rules of creation and annihilation operators. Only for certain ratios of magnetic field strength to the oscillator frequency does one obtain bounded closed orbits, and presumably only in these cases do degeneracies exist quantum-mechanically. A transition to a rotating coordinate system reduces the problem to that of a plane harmonic oscillator; however, the time dependencies of the transformation must be allowed for interpreting the constants thereby arising. Moreover, the velocity-dependent forces introduce gauge transformations which also affect the interpretation of the symmetries. There are two kinds of symmetries—inner symmetries involving the canonical coordinates and governing the shape of the orbits, and outer symmetries involving the mechanical coordinates and governing the location of the orbits.
The Hamiltonian of harmonic oscillator is symmetric under the replacement of canonically conjugate variables and a canonical transformation to ladder operators maintains this symmetry.The Hamiltonian is expressed through a symmetrized product of the ladder operators and, as a result, at quantization there arise a zeropoint energy.Therefore, for quantized fields, canonically conjugate variables of which enter into the Hamiltonian unsymmetrically, the zero-point energy could not arise.A new symmetry of harmonic oscillator is found: a wave equation and its solutions do not vary at a joint changing of signs of frequency, energy and mass of a particle.It is shown that the problem of the negative norm for negative-frequency states appears at taking positive mass at negative energy and, contrary, the problem disappears at taking the same sign of mass and energy as it is required by relativistic kinematics.In the nonrelativistic theory, considered as a limiting case of relativistic theory, the states of a particle with negative frequency, energy and mass are described consistently as evolving only backward in time and representing the states of its antiparticle with positive frequency, energy and mass evolving forward in time.For such charge-conjugation symmetric system of oscillators an extended space of states with generalized operators is constructed.
The system of two harmonic oscillators with different sign frequencies is presented as a positive-frequency oscillator with a complex generalized coordinate where there are a global U(1) symmetry and a charge conjugation symmetry (Csymmetry).It is shown that two pairs of ladder operators, appearing at the frequency decomposition of canonical variables, are not mutually charge-conjugate and their standard interpretation as operators of charge-conjugate quanta breaks the Csymmetry.Bilinear operator identities for the ladder operators are found allowed the theory to obey the C-symmetry restrictions and to express observables through the mutually charge-conjugate operators.These identities hold for C-symmetric interactions also.It is shown that C-symmetry eliminates a ground state zero-point charge and a zero-point energy.The uncertainty relations are generalized for nonhermitian canonical variables and it is shown that the charge-conjugation symmetric ground states do not quantized.It is shown that the C-symmetric interactions do not contribute to the ground state energy in all orders of perturbation theory.
Quantization of spin and orbital angular momenta in standard quantum mechanics is rooted in the fundamental rotational symmetry of space in conjunction with the results of experiments on atomic and subatomic particles conducted with the Stern-Gerlach apparatus. We explain some of the most important features of spin and orbital angular momenta as inescapable consequences of elementary Stern-Gerlach experiments viewed in light of the rotational symmetry of space. The rotation operator is first derived for spin-½ particles, then extended to spin-1 particles by treating the case of a hydrogen atom in its ground state, where the spin of the proton combines with that of the electron to create a spin-1 triplet state. Along the way, we examine the evolution of a particle’s spin state under an applied magnetic field, where the interaction energy arises from the existence of a magnetic dipole moment for each particle in proportion to its spin angular momentum. Whereas a constant magnetic field B0 causes the particle’s magnetic moment to gyrate around the direction of B0, it will be seen that the presence of a small oscillating magnetic field perpendicular to B0 brings about the so-called Rabi oscillations, which involve periodic flippings of the particle’s spin orientation. In the case of a hydrogen atom in its ground state, the interaction between the magnetic dipole moments of the proton and the electron splits the ground state between a lower energy singlet having a net angular momentum of zero (spin-0 state), and a higher energy triplet having a total angular momentum of ħ (spin-1 state). This hyperfine splitting is the source of the well-known 21-cm line observed in the spectrum of the hydrogen atom, which arises from transitions between the atom’s singlet and triplet states. In the final section, we put forward an argument (originally made by Richard Feynman) that ties the rotational symmetry of space to the conservation of angular momentum in quantum mechanics. The argument is, in fact, quite general, enabling one to deduce other conservation laws from various inherent symmetries of quantum mechanical systems.
The behaviour of quantum systems in non-inertial frames is revisited from the point of view of affine coherent state (ACS) quantization. We restrict our approach to the one-particle dynamics confined in a rotating plane about a fixed axis. This plane is considered as punctured due to the existence of the rotation center, which is viewed as a singularity. The corresponding phase space is the affine group of the plane and the ACS quantization enables us to quantize the system by respecting the affine symmetry of the true phase space. Our formulation predicts the appearance of an additional quantum centrifugal term, besides the usual angular-momentum one, which prevents the particle to reach the singular rotation center. Moreover it helps us to understand why two different non-inertial Schrödinger equations are obtained in previous works. The validity of our equation can be confirmed experimentally by observing the harmonic oscillator bound states and the critical angular velocity for their existence.