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Chinese Journal of Chemical Physics

Evaluating harmonic oscillator propagator with stochastic decoupling

Jiushu Shao

Published Apr 1, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

By virtue of stochastic decoupling, the quantum evolution of a harmonic oscillator is converted into two virtual contributions dictated by either a stochastic creation operator or a stochastic annihilation operator. Two approaches are provided to resolve these virtual two evolution operators. One is based on the coherent-state representation and the other deals with the momentum representation after separating out the position and momentum factors. The quantum propagator of the harmonic oscillator is obtained by taking the random average of the combined virtual propagators. The main mathematical exercise of the whole procedure is the calculation of the Gaussian integral.

DOI
10.1063/1674-0068/cjcp2312121

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By virtue of stochastic decoupling, the quantum evolution of a harmonic oscillator is converted into two virtual contributions dictated by either a stochastic creation operator or a stochastic annihilation operator. Two approaches are provided to resolve these virtual two evolution operators. One is based on the coherent-state representation and the other deals with the momentum representation after separating out the position and momentum factors. The quantum propagator of the harmonic oscillator is obtained by taking the random average of the combined virtual propagators. The main mathematical exercise of the whole procedure is the calculation of the Gaussian integral.
Operator algebra techniques are employed to derive the quantum evolution operator for the harmonic oscillator. The derivation begins with the construction of the annihilation and creation operators and the determination of the wave function for the coherent state as well as its time-dependent evolution, and ends with the transformation of the propagator in a mixed position-coherent-state representation to the desired one in configuration space. Throughout the entire procedure, besides elementary operator manipulations, it is only necessary to solve linear differential equations and to calculate Gaussian integrals.
We propose a stochastic Schrödinger equation in which the momentum is coupled to a white Gaussian noise. In the stochastic representation, the kinetic energy representing the self-interaction of momentum is reduced to a linear term of momentum. As such, the quantum evolution operator factorizes into two contributions due to the momentum and the potential, respectively. The exact quantum propagator thereby becomes an expectation of the stochastic one in which the amplitude results from the potential with a fluctuating position: The particle moves with a constant velocity, subjected to a complex Brownian motion. We demonstrate that the stochastic Schrödinger equation can be feasibly used to derive the quantum propagators for the linear potential and the harmonic oscillator system. Novel semiclassical and other approximations may be developed from the new representation of quantum mechanics.
Quantum evolution was recently shown to be equivalent to the mathematical expectation of the stochastic motion described by the Schr\"odinger equation with momentum-coupled white noise [J. Shao, J. Chem. Phys. 159, 024128 (2023)]. The stochastic formulation provides a convenient means of evaluating quantum propagators because the involved kinetic and potential contributions are disentangled. With the help of the auxiliary functional averaging technique, we apply this scheme to the derivation of the quantum propagators for systems of exponential, linear, harmonic, and $\ensuremath{\delta}$-function potentials. Notably, our work presents a truly workable expression of the quantum propagator for the exponential potential problem. To demonstrate the features and advantages of this propagator, we use it to calculate the wave-packet dynamics and compare it to the split-operator method.
White noise analysis is used to derive the propagator of an open quantum system consisting of a harmonic oscillator which is coupled to an environment consisting of N multimode harmonic oscillators. The quantum propagators are obtained after solving for the normal modes of the system-environment interaction in order to decouple the coordinates in the Lagrangian describing the dynamics of the system, the environment and their interaction with each other. The decoupled Lagrangian is then used in the path integral corresponding to the propagator of the system, with the path integral evaluated using white noise analysis. The resulting propagator is then found to consist of a product of N simple harmonic oscillator propagators. N-2 of these propagators correspond to the degenerate normal mode frequencies of the system-environment interaction, while the other 2 correspond to the non-degenerate normal mode frequencies. This method of deriving the propagators greatly simplifies the task of mathematically describing the dynamics of the open quantum system. The ease of use of this method suggests that, together with its inherent mathematical rigor, white noise analysis can be a powerful tool in analyzing the dynamics of an open quantum system.
Chapter 9 is devoted to a detailed study of the harmonic oscillator in one dimension. The time-dependent Schrödinger equation is used to construct the coherent oscillator packet with minimal dispersion, which provides an opportunity to appreciate the similarities and differences between the dynamics of the classical and quantum oscillators. In a second step, we study the stationary solutions of the oscillator, which represent one of the most important orthogonal sets of quantum eigenfunctions because of its many applications, properties, and relative simplicity. Further, the use of raising and lowering (or creation and annihilation) operators is shown to be a powerful way of dealing with both material and field oscillators in general. Finally, the problem of two coupled oscillators is used to generalize the Schrödinger equation to the case of more than one particle.
White noise analysis has gained considerable attention in the past years in the analysis of quantum systems, polymer entanglement, transport, and diffusion phenomena. However, there is dearth on the application of the analysis into open quantum systems specifically coupled harmonic oscillators in an environment. In this work, white noise analysis was used to study the dy- namics of the propagator of an open quantum system consisting of coupled harmonic oscillators that are coupled to an environment consisting of N-2 multimode harmonic oscillators. The quantum propagators were obtained after solving for the normal modes of the system-environment interaction to decouple the coordinates in the Lagrangian describing the dynamics of the system, the environment and their interaction with each other. The decoupled Lagrangian was used in the path integral corresponding to the propagator of the system, with the path integral evaluated using white noise analysis. The resulting propagator was found to consist of the product of N simple harmonic oscillator propagators. N-3 of these propagators correspond to the degenerate normal mode frequencies of the system-environment interaction, while the other three correspond to the non-degenerate normal mode frequen- cies, two of these nondegeneracies correspond to complex normal modes. This approach of describing the dynamics of the open quantum system greatly simplifies the task mathematically.