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Physical Review A

Coherent state and the damped harmonic oscillator

Gautam Kumar Ghosh, Rainer W. Hasse

Published Sep 1, 1981• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Although the method of dual coordinates has been employed in the literature to quantize the damped harmonic oscillator, one cannot reproduce the proper classical limit by this method. This is shown by constructing operators which have the correct damped behavior and obtaining coherent states as their eigenstates. These states turn out to be nonnormalizable; this is shown to be due to the unphysical nature of the Hamiltonian employed in the method of dual coordinates.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.24.1621

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Although the method of dual coordinates has been employed in the literature to quantize the damped harmonic oscillator, one cannot reproduce the proper classical limit by this method. This is shown by constructing operators which have the correct damped behavior and obtaining coherent states as their eigenstates. These states turn out to be nonnormalizable; this is shown to be due to the unphysical nature of the Hamiltonian employed in the method of dual coordinates.
For a damped harmonic oscillator forced by a time-dependent field, the exact wave function is obtained by three different methods: (i) path integral, (ii) second quantization, and (iii) dynamical invariant. The explicit form of the dynamical invariant involves a solution to a corresponding auxiliary equation. The coherent states, defined as eigenstates of a new destruction operator, form a nonorthogonal, overcomplete set and correspond to the minimum uncertainty states. These coherent states give the exact classical motion of the damped driven harmonic oscillator.
We quantize the system of a damped harmonic oscillator coupled to its time-reversed image, known as Bateman's dual system. By using the Feynman–Hibbs method, the time-dependent quantum states of such a system are constructed entirely in the framework of the classical theory. The geometric phase is calculated and found to be proportional to the ground-state energy of the one-dimensional linear harmonic oscillator to which the two-dimensional system reduces under appropriate constraint. PACS Nos.: 03.65Ta, 03.65Vf, 03.65Ca, 03.65Fd
Abstract By selecting a right generalized coordinate X, which contains the general solutions of the classical motion equation of a forced damped harmonic oscillator, we obtain a simple Hamiltonian which does not contain time for the oscillator such that Schrödinger equation and its solutions can be directly written out in X representation. The wave functin in x representation are also given with the help of the eigenfunctions of the operator X^ \hat X X^ in x representation. The evolution of ⟨x^⟩ \left\langle {\hat x} \right\rangle ⟨x^⟩ is the same as in the classical mechanics, and the uncertainty in position is independent of an external influence; one part of energy mean is quantized and attenuated, and the other is equal to the classical energy.
The damped harmonic oscillator is a workhorse for the study of dissipation in quantum mechanics. However, despite its simplicity, this system has given rise to some approximations whose validity and relation to more refined descriptions deserve a thorough investigation. In this work, we apply a method that allows us to diagonalize exactly the dissipative Hamiltonians that are frequently adopted in the literature. Using this method, we derive the conditions of validity of the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) and show how this approximate description relates to more general ones. We also show that the existence of dissipative coherent states is intimately related to the RWA. Finally, through the evaluation of the dynamics of the damped oscillator, we notice an important property of the dissipative model that has not been properly accounted for in previous works, namely the necessity of new constraints to the application of the factorizable initial conditions.
Quantization of a damped harmonic oscillator leads to so called Bateman's dual system. The corresponding Bateman's Hamiltonian, being a self-adjoint operator, displays the discrete family of complex eigenvalues. We show that they correspond to the poles of energy eigenvectors and the corresponding resolvent operator when continued to the complex energy plane. Therefore, the corresponding generalized eigenvectors may be interpreted as resonant states which are responsible for the irreversible quantum dynamics of a damped harmonic oscillator.