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arXiv:quant-ph/9611053 · Physical Review A

Inverting a time-dependent harmonic oscillator potential by a unitary transformation and a class of exactly solvable oscillators

Ali Mostafazadeh

Published Jun 1, 1997• 23 citations
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Abstract

A time-dependent unitary (canonical) transformation is found that maps the Hamiltonian for a harmonic oscillator with time-dependent real mass and real frequency to that of a generalized harmonic oscillator with time-dependent real mass and imaginary frequency. The latter may be reduced to an ordinary harmonic oscillator by means of another unitary (canonical) transformation. A simple analysis of the resulting system leads to the identification of a previously unknown class of exactly solvable time-dependent oscillators. Furthermore, it is shown how one can apply these results to establish a canonical equivalence between some real and imaginary frequency oscillators. In particular it is shown that a harmonic oscillator whose frequency is constant and whose mass grows linearly in time is canonically equivalent with an oscillator whose frequency changes from being real to imaginary and vice versa repeatedly.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.55.4084

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A time-dependent unitary (canonical) transformation is found that maps the Hamiltonian for a harmonic oscillator with time-dependent real mass and real frequency to that of a generalized harmonic oscillator with time-dependent real mass and imaginary frequency. The latter may be reduced to an ordinary harmonic oscillator by means of another unitary (canonical) transformation. A simple analysis of the resulting system leads to the identification of a previously unknown class of exactly solvable time-dependent oscillators. Furthermore, it is shown how one can apply these results to establish a canonical equivalence between some real and imaginary frequency oscillators. In particular it is shown that a harmonic oscillator whose frequency is constant and whose mass grows linearly in time is canonically equivalent with an oscillator whose frequency changes from being real to imaginary and vice versa repeatedly.
The unitary operator that transforms a harmonic oscillator system of time-dependent frequency into that of a simple harmonic oscillator of different timescale is found, with and without an inverse-square potential. It is shown that for both cases, this operator can be used in finding complete sets of wave functions of a generalized harmonic oscillator system from the well-known sets of the simple harmonic oscillator. Exact invariants of the time-dependent systems can also be obtained from the constant Hamiltonians of unit mass and frequency by making use of this unitary transformation. The geometric phases for the wave functions of a generalized harmonic oscillator with an inverse-square potential are given.
For a harmonic oscillator with time-dependent (positive) mass and frequency, a unitary operator is shown to transform the quantum states of the system to those of a harmonic oscillator system of unit mass and time-dependent frequency, as well as operators. For a driven harmonic oscillator, a unitary transformation which relates the driven system and a system of the same mass and frequency without a driving force is given, as a generalization of previous results, in terms of the solution of classical equation of motion of the driven system. Thus transformations give a simple way of finding exact wavefunctions of a driven harmonic oscillator system, provided the quantum states of the corresponding system of unit mass are given.
Quantum canonical transformations corresponding to time-dependent diffeomorphisms of the configuration space are studied. A special class of these transformations which correspond to time-dependent dilatations is used to identify a previously unknown class of exactly solvable time-dependent harmonic oscillators. The Caldirola-Kanai oscillator belongs to this class. For a general time-dependent harmonic oscillator, it is shown that choosing the dilatation parameter to satisfy the classical equation of motion, one obtains the solution of the Schrödinger equation. A simple generalization of this result leads to the reduction of the Schrödinger equation to a second-order ordinary differential equation whose special case is the auxiliary equation of the Lewis-Riesenfeld invariant theory. The time-evolution operator is expressed in terms of a positive real solution of this equation in a closed form, and the time-dependent position and momentum operators are calculated.
Quantum canonical transformations corresponding to the action of the unitary operator eiε(t)f(x)pf(x)e^{iε(t)\sqrt{f(x)}p\sqrt{f(x)}}eiε(t)f(x)​pf(x)​ is studied. It is shown that for f(x)=xf(x)=xf(x)=x, the effect of this transformation is to rescale the position and momentum operators by eε(t)e^{ε(t)}eε(t) and e−ε(t)e^{-ε(t)}e−ε(t), respectively. This transformation is shown to lead to the identification of a previously unknown class of exactly solvable time-dependent harmonic oscillators. It turns out that the Caldirola-Kanai oscillator whose mass is given by m=m0eγtm=m_0 e^{γt}m=m0​eγt, belongs to this class. It is also shown that for arbitrary f(x)f(x)f(x), this canonical transformations map the dynamics of a free particle with constant mass to that of free particle with a position-dependent mass. In other words, they lead to a change of the metric of the space.
In this work we present the classical and quantum solutions for an arbitrary system of time-dependent coupled harmonic oscillators, where the masses (m), frequencies (ω) and coupling parameter (k) are functions of time. To obtain the classical solutions, we use a coordinate and momentum transformations along with a canonical transformation to write the original Hamiltonian as the sum of two Hamiltonians of uncoupled harmonic oscillators with modified time-dependent frequencies and unitary masses. To obtain the exact quantum solutions we use a unitary transformation and the Lewis and Riesenfeld (LR) invariant method. The exact wave functions are obtained by solving the respective Milne–Pinney (MP) equation for each system. We obtain the solutions for the system with m1 = m2 = m0eγt, ω1 = ω01e-γt/2, ω2 = ω02e-γt/2 and k = k0.
In this work we present the classical and quantum solutions of time-dependent coupled harmonic oscillators. In these systems the masses, frequencies and coupling parameter (k) are functions of time. Four systems are investigated. To obtain the classical solutions we use a coordinate and momentum transformations along with a canonical transformation to write the original Hamiltonian as the sum of two Hamiltonians of uncoupled harmonic oscillators with modified time-dependent frequencies and unitary masses. We find the analytical expression for position and velocity of each oscillator of the systems. To obtain the exact quantum solutions we use a unitary transformation and the Lewis and Riesenfeld invariant method. The wave functions obtained are written in terms of a c-number quantity () which is solution of the Milne-Pinney equation. For each system we solve the respective Milne-Pinney equation and discuss how the quantum fluctuations and the uncertainty product evolve with time.