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Fortschritte der Physik/Progress of Physics

A Correlation Among Orthogonality Relation, Variational Principle and Perturbation Theory

Biswanath Rath

Published Jan 1, 1991• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

It is observed that variationally calculated wavefunctions do not satisfy orthogonality relation when tested for the potentials like anharmonic oscillator and deviated hydrogen atom type. A new approach is suggested using quasi-states only to correlate between variationally calculated wavefunctions and orthogonality relation using perturbation theory considering the anharmonic oscillator example. Analytically expression for energy levels of the anharmonic oscillator are calculated up to the second order. A test for convergency of the perturbation theory is also discussed.

DOI
10.1002/prop.2190390703

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It is observed that variationally calculated wavefunctions do not satisfy orthogonality relation when tested for the potentials like anharmonic oscillator and deviated hydrogen atom type. A new approach is suggested using quasi-states only to correlate between variationally calculated wavefunctions and orthogonality relation using perturbation theory considering the anharmonic oscillator example. Analytically expression for energy levels of the anharmonic oscillator are calculated up to the second order. A test for convergency of the perturbation theory is also discussed.
This is an investigation of the energy levels and wavefunctions of an anharmonic oscillator characterised by the potential 1/2 (omega 2 q 2 + lambda q 4 ). As a lowest-order approximation an extremely simple formula for energy levels, E i (0) = (i + 1/2)1/4(3/alpha i + alpha i ), is derived (i being the quantum number of the energy level), which covers any (lambda, i). alpha i is the real positive root of a cubic equation: y i alpha i 3 + alpha i 2 - 1 = 0, with y i = 6lambda(2i 2 + 2i + 1)/(2i+1). This formula reproduces the exact energy levels within an error of about 1% for any ( lambda ,i) (the worst case is 2% for i = 0, lambda to infinity). Systematically higher orders of this perturbation theory are developed, which contains the 'usual' perturbation theory for the limiting case of small lambda , but this perturbation theory is valid for any (i, lambda). The second-order perturbation theory reduces the errors of our lowest-order results by a factor of about 1/5 in general. Various ranges (large, intermediate, small) of (i, lambda ) are investigated and compared with the exact values obtained by the Montroll group (1975, 1978). For i = 0, 1, even the fourth-order perturbation calculation can be elaborated explicitly, which reduces the error to about 0.01% for any lambda . For small lambda it gives correct numerical coefficients up to lambda 4 terms, as it should.
This paper discusses some practical problems in quantum mechanics, particularly finding solutions of the Schrödinger equation for some cases, as it is a pivotal part of this area. The article focuses on using perturbation theory to calculate the approximate ground state energy for both helium atom and quartic anharmonic oscillator. For the helium atom, conventional perturbation theory is used to solve for the approximate energy, whilst for the anharmonic oscillator, a slightly different approach, that is perturbation theory incorporating a parameter, is chosen to improve the precision of the approximation. The final relative errors for the ground state energy of helium atom model are, for the first order perturbation, , and for the second order, , and that for the anharmonic oscillator is . The study of perturbation theory gives insights into understandings of how it may be modified further to pursue a better level of precision. This facilitates development of new approximation techniques for solving quantum-mechanical issues.
In this article, for pedagogical purposes we have discussed the application of nondegenerate perturbation theory up to the third order to compute energy eigenvalues and wave functions for the quantum anharmonic oscillator. Energy levels of a single quartic oscillator for 𝜆 values in range of 0.1-1 are given. Perturbed and non-perturbed wave functions of the levels up to the fourth excited level are compared. Ground, first and second excited energy levels are also calculated by applying finite differences method and, results are compared with the ones obtained via perturbation theory. It is found that perturbation theory gives comparable results only for a small 𝜆 parameter and for the ground state. The quartic term in the Hamiltonian of the anharmonic oscillator leads to a more effective confinement of the particle which is deduced from the plots of wavefunctions and probability distributions. Meanwhile, the number of zero crossing nodes of the wavefunctions increases as the energy level increases, which is an expected result for both the harmonic and anharmonic oscillator.
The behaviour of high-order perturbative-variational wavefunctions, with one or more free parameters, is studied. A variational criterion, and a criterion based upon variation of the norm of the perturbative approximation function with order, are used for fixing free parameters. For the quartic anharmonic oscillator, both criteria seem to be equivalent. The obtained energies, not only for the ground state but also for excited states, are in excellent agreement with previous results, although when the authors go to higher excited states they lose precision because of the worsening of the perturbative-variational wavefunctions.
In this work, an unusual approach is taken to calculate the ground state and first excited state energies of the anharmonic oscillator potential. By using the variational method, analytical wave functions which have extremely accurate expectation values for the quartic or sextic oscillators are obtained. The corrections due to the other terms are then calculated perturbatively. It is shown that each approach, which starts with a different choice of zeroth‐order term, provides results that agree with those computed from numerical integration and series solution. Joining the above schemes, yields a combined variational and perturbative treatment of anharmonic oscillator problems.