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American Journal of Physics

Geometrical Relations for Charged Particles in a Uniform Magnetic Field

D. M. Thomson

Published Nov 1, 1972• 1 citation

Abstract

By using appropriate gauge transformations one can develop quasiclassical wavefunctions for charged particles in a uniform magnetic field which have large amplitudes only in the neighborhood of classical Larmor orbits centered at arbitrary points in a plane perpendicular to the field. Pairs of such wavefunctions are not orthogonal to each other. Interesting geometrical relationships between these solutions and the degenerate orthonormal sets of wave-functions in a particular gauge can be found as a result of evaluating overlap integrals. This has been done for both the cylindrical and Landau gauges. In the cylindrical gauge certain of the orthonormal wavefunctions corresponding to different energies give identical probability distributions. Relationships between quantum and classical results, and the effect of the uncertainty principle are discussed.

DOI: 10.1119/1.1987010

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By using appropriate gauge transformations one can develop quasiclassical wavefunctions for charged particles in a uniform magnetic field which have large amplitudes only in the neighborhood of classical Larmor orbits centered at arbitrary points in a plane perpendicular to the field. Pairs of such wavefunctions are not orthogonal to each other. Interesting geometrical relationships between these solutions and the degenerate orthonormal sets of wave-functions in a particular gauge can be found as a result of evaluating overlap integrals. This has been done for both the cylindrical and Landau gauges. In the cylindrical gauge certain of the orthonormal wavefunctions corresponding to different energies give identical probability distributions. Relationships between quantum and classical results, and the effect of the uncertainty principle are discussed.

The eigensolutions of the Schrödinger equation for the motion of a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field depend on the choice of electromagnetic gauge. In the Landau gauge it is hard to discern a relationship between the eigensolutions and the circular or helical orbits of classical theory. In this paper a wave packet is constructed from the Landau gauge eigensolutions which simulates the classical motion in the plane perpendicular to the magnetic field. Some properties of the wave packet are discussed.

Using the Landau and symmetric gauges for the vector potential of a constant magnetic field and the quantum problem of a charged particle moving on a flat surface, we show the classical electromagnetic gauge transformation does not correspond to a one-dimensional unitary group transformation U(1) of the wave function for the quantum case. In addition, with the re-examination of the relation between the magnetic field B and its vector potential A, we found that, in order to have a consistent formulation of the dynamics of the charged particle with both expressions, we must have that B=∇×A if and only if B≠0.

We study the problem of a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field with two different gauges, known as Landau and symmetric gauges. By using a similarity transformation in terms of the displacement operator we show that, for the Landau gauge, the eigenfunctions for this problem are the harmonic oscillator number coherent states. In the symmetric gauge, we calculate the SU(1; 1) Perelomov number coherent states for this problem in cylindrical coordinates in a closed form. Finally, we show that these Perelomov number coherent states are related to the harmonic oscillator number coherent states by the contraction of the SU(1; 1) group to the Heisenberg-Weyl group.

We study the problem of a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field with two different gauges, known as Landau and symmetric gauges. By using a similarity transformation in terms of the displacement operator we show that, for the Landau gauge, the eigenfunctions for this problem are the harmonic oscillator number coherent states. In the symmetric gauge, we calculate the

SU(1,1)

Perelomov number coherent states for this problem in cylindrical coordinates in a closed form. Finally, we show that these Perelomov number coherent states are related to the harmonic oscillator number coherent states by the contraction of the

SU(1,1)

group to the Heisenberg-Weyl group.