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American Journal of Physics

Coherent states of a harmonic oscillator

Stephen Howard, Sanat Kumar Roy

Published Dec 1, 1987• 37 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The coherent states of a harmonic oscillator are introduced following Schrödinger’s definition and the equivalence with other definitions is established. The basic properties of these states are discussed in some detail.
DOI
10.1119/1.15279

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The elementary quantum theory of quasi-classical states for mechanical harmonic oscillators is applied to the radiation oscillators describing light, and thus used to define quasi-classical states of light. These states are called “coherent”, because the expectation value of any normally ordered product of creation and annihilation operators factorizes for them. A theoretical discussion of possible sources for coherent states is followed by experimental evidence for their existence. The mathematical properties of coherent states, e.g., nonorthogonality and overcompleteness, are explained in order to use them to represent states and operators. These representations provide a suitable replacement for the classical phase space description of light, which is forbidden by the uncertainty principle. The quantum phase space approach leads to the definition of the Wigner distribution, the Q-function, the P-function, and Gaussian mixed states.
Introduction In our discussion of the classical electromagnetic field we found it convenient to describe the field by a complex amplitude, both in the frequency and in the time domains. The complex representation is convenient partly because it contains information about the magnitude and about the phase of the electromagnetic disturbance, and partly because of its analytic properties. These features turn out to be particularly useful for the description of the optical coherence properties of the field. We shall see that an analogous quantum state of the field exists, leading to an interesting representation that is also particularly useful for the treatment of optical coherence. This coherent-state representation leads to a close correspondence between the quantum and classical correlation functions. The coherent states of the field come as close as possible to being classical states of definite complex amplitude. We shall find that coherent states turn out to be particularly appropriate for the description of the electromagnetic fields generated by coherent sources, like lasers and parametric oscillators; indeed it turns out that the field produced by any deterministic current source is in a coherent state. In the following sections we shall examine some of the properties of coherent states, and then go on to discuss representations based on these states. Coherent states were first discovered in connection with the quantum harmonic oscillator by Schrödinger (1926), who referred to them as states of minimum uncertainty product.
The long-standing problem of finding coherent states for the (bound state portion of the) hydrogen atom is positively resolved. The states in question: (i) are normalized and parameterized continuously, (ii) admit a resolution of unity with a positive measure, and (iii) enjoy the property that the temporal evolution of any coherent state by the hydrogen atom Hamiltonian remains a coherent state for all time. Harmonic-oscillator coherent states In modern terms, the distinguished set of states Schrodinger introduced for the harmonic oscillator 1 are now commonly known as coherent states 2 and are given, for all z 2 I C, by jzi j e (za y \\Gammaz a) j0i = e \\Gamma 1 2 jzj 2 1 X n=0 z n p n! jni; (1) where [a; a y ] = 1 as usual. Here jni; n = 0; 1; 2; : : :, denote normalized eigenstates of the number operator N , N jni = njni, which may be identified with the eigenstates of the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian H 0 = !N = !a y a (¯h = 1). As such it follows that ...
The purpose of this work is to introduce, in a simple, intuitive way, the coherent and squeezed states of the quantum harmonic oscillator (QHO), through a series of exercises, which are solved in detail. Starting from the application of a spatial translation to the ground state of the QHO, we introduce the spatial and momentum translations, focusing on their application to the QHO, which leads us to the displacement operator. Next, we introduce the coherent states and examine their basic aspects. We then proceed to give a simple and purely intuitive introduction to the squeezed states and we conclude by identifying the coherent states as states of minimum energy expectation value compared to the respective squeezed states. The reader is assumed to have a basic knowledge of the postulates and the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, including the Dirac notation and the ladder operator method of the QHO.
We first review the properties of the harmonic-oscillator coherent states which can be equivalently defined as (a) a specific subset of the $x\ensuremath{-}p$ minimum-uncertainty states, (b) eigenstates of the annihilation operator, or (c) states created by a certain unitary exponential displacement operator. Then we present a new method for finding coherent states for particles in general potentials. Its basis is the desire to find those states which most nearly follow the classical motion, but it is most nearly a generalization of the minimum-uncertainty method. The properties of these states are discussed in detail. Next we show that the annihilation operator and displacement operator methods, as heretofore defined, cannot be applied to general potentials (whose eigenvalues are not equally spaced). We define a generalization of these methods but show that the states so defined are not, in general, equivalent to the minimum-uncertainty coherent states. We discuss a number of properties of our coherent states and the procedures we have used.