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Lectures 10
Anil Shaji
School of Physics, IISER - TVM
(Dated: 04-September-2014)
The quantum harmonic oscillator
2
I.
To find the stationary state of the quantum harmonic oscillator we have to solve the time
independent Schr
odinger equation,
~2 2 (x) 1
+ m 2 x2 (x) = E(x).
2m x2
2
(1)
There are two ways of solving this equation. The first is the direct approach based on standard
techniques in the theory of differential equations. The other is a rather clever approach that
simplifies the path to the solution considerably. We will study both approaches, starting with the
harder, standard method.
A.
The differential equation in (1) can be reduced to a nicer form by changing variables to
r
m
=
x.
~
In terms of , the Schr
odinger equation becomes
2
= ( 2 K),
2
where
K=
2E
.
~
(2)
=
.
2
x x
Before attempting to solve Eq. (2) we probe its solutions by considering the case where K
(and 1). The equation reduces to
2
= 2 ,
2
which has the solution (you can easily check this),
() = Ae
Since we require
solution,
2 /2
+ Be
2 /2
() = Ae
2 /2
Now we assume that the true solution to the Schrodinger equation has the form
() = h()e
2 /2
3
where h() is a function that takes a constant value for large values of so as to match with the
asymptotic solution we have already written down. Substituting the above form (ansatz) into the
Schrodinger equation we get the following differential equation for h(),
h
2h
2
+ (K 1)h = 0
2
(3)
Since we expect h() to be a fairly well behaved function of , we expect it to have a series
expansion of the form
h() = a0 + a1 + a2 2 + . . . =
aj j .
j=0
So we have
X
h
= a1 + 2a2 + 3a3 2 + . . . =
j aj j1
d
2h
d 2
= 2 1 a2 + 3 2 a3 + . . . =
j=0
j(j 1)aj j2 =
j=0
X
(j + 2)(j + 1)aj+2 j .
j=0
i
(j + 2)(j + 1)aj+2 (2j + 1 K)aj j = 0.
(4)
j=0
If the above equation has to be zero for all possible values of , then the uniqueness theorem for
series expansion says that each of the coefficients in the sum should be zero. So we obtain the
following recursion relation for the coefficients in the series expansion of h():
aj+2 =
2j + 1 K
aj .
(j + 2)(j + 1)
(5)
Because this recursion relation connects aj+2 to aj , we require the first two coefficients, a0 and a1
to determine all the remaining coefficients. This also splits the series for h() into two parts as
h() = heven () + hodd ()
where
heven () = a0 + a2 2 + a4 4 + . . .
hodd () = a1 + a3 3 + a5 5 + . . .
Before we proceed further, we note that the potential we have is symmetric about x = 0. So we
expect the stationary states to also have the same symmetry. Since we need only the observable
quantity, namely |(x)|2 to be symmetric about x = 0 we can conclude that the stationary states
can be either an even function or an odd function but not a combination of both. Accordingly, the
solutions we have correspond to either a0 = 0 or a1 = 0.
4
Let us now explore one of the two parts of the series, say heven (). As we did with the wave
function () let us look at the asymptotics of the series. If we assume j K (and j 1) the
recursion relation in Eq. (5) simplifies to
2
1
aj+2 = aj =
aj
j
j/2
we can now iterate this recursion relation to obtain (assuming j is even since we are considering
heven .
aj+2
1
1
1
1
a0 =
a0 ,
j/2 (j 2)/2
1
(j/2)!
so that
heven () ' a0
X
j=0
X 1
1
2
j = a0
2k = a0 e .
(j/2)!
k!
k=0
Using this analysis of the asymptotic behavior of the series, we find that
() = h()e
2 /2
' a0 e3
2 /2
This is not a normalizable function of . So something seems to be wrong. The only assumption
that we have made is j K. So one concludes that j cannot be arbitrarily big if one has to find a
physically meaningful solution to the Schrodinger equation. The only way j can be prevented from
being arbitrarily big is if the recursion relation, (5) terminates. This can happen if K = 2n + 1
where n is an integer. In that case an+2 = 0 even if an 6= 0 and it follows that all subsequent terms,
an+4 , an+6 . . . will also be zero.
Let us look at the condition on K more carefully
1
2E
= 2n + 1 E = ~ n +
.
K=
~
2
This means that the possible energies that the harmonic oscillator can have is quantized in units
of ~/2. In other words, the possible oscillator energies go in steps of ~/2. We can label these
energies as En . We also note that even the ground state of the Harmonic oscillator has a finite
energy. Contrast this with the case of the classical harmonic oscillator for which the ground state
is the particle at rest at the bottom of the potential making its energy zero. Also note that the
spacing between the energy levels of the quantum harmonic oscillator is constant. This is unlike
the case of the quantum particle in a box where the spacing between energy levels grows as n2 .
The number n not only labels the energy levels of the harmonic oscillator, it also labels the
point at which the series expansion for h() terminates. So we can label the function h also as
hn () to denote the fact that we are talking about h() as it applies to the nth stationary state of
the oscillator.
Using the recursion relation (5) and the condition that the wave function is either an even or
odd function of so that only one among a0 and a1 is non-zero at a time, we can list the first few
5
hn () as
h0 () = a0
h1 () = a1
h2 () = a0 (1 2 2 )
h3 () = a1 ( 2 3 /3)
1.
2 /3
(6)
So
0 = a0 e
2 /2
= a0 e 2~ x
Normalization yields,
2
|a0 |
m
x2
~
r
2
= |a0 |
~
=1
m
and we get
a0 =
m
~
1/4
and
0 (x) =
m
~
1/4
e 2~ x .
2a0
and
1 (x) =
m
~
1/4 r
2m m x2
x e 2~ .
~
Hn ( m/~ x)e 2~ x ,
n (x) =
n
~
2 n!
where Hn () are the Hermite polynomials. The first few Hermite polynomials are listed below:
H0 = 1,
H1 = 2
H2 = 4 2 2
H3 = 8 3 12
(7)
6
The nth Hermite polynomial can also be obtained using the Rodriguez formula,
n
2
n 2 d
e .
Hn () = (1) e
d
The first few energy levels and the corresponding stationary states of the quantum harmonic
oscillator are given in the figure below.