Journal of Mathematical Physics
Canonical transformations applied to the free Landau electron
M. H. Boon, T. H. Seligman
Abstract
It is shown that the problem of a free eletron in a uniform magnetic field provides an interesting example for the use of recently developed canonical transformation methods in quantum mechanics. The Schrödinger equation is immediately solved by a unitary transformation corresponding to a finite linear symplectic transformation in phase space. The natural invariance and dynamical groups involve affine and not only linear symplectic transformations, and the Weyl group turns out to be an appropriate invariance group to account completely for the infinite degeneracies.