No Arabic abstract
We present a semiclassical analysis of the quantum propagator of a particle confined on one side by a steeply, monotonically rising potential. The models studied in detail have potentials proportional to $x^{alpha}$ for $x>0$; the limit $alphatoinfty$ would reproduce a perfectly reflecting boundary, but at present we concentrate on the cases $alpha =1$ and 2, for which exact solutions in terms of well known functions are available for comparison. We classify the classical paths in this system by their qualitative nature and calculate the contributions of the various classes to the leading-order semiclassical approximation: For each classical path we find the action $S$, the amplitude function $A$ and the Laplacian of $A$. (The Laplacian is of interest because it gives an estimate of the error in the approximation and is needed for computing higher-order approximations.) The resulting semiclassical propagator can be used to rewrite the exact problem as a Volterra integral equation, whose formal solution by iteration (Neumann series) is a semiclassical, not perturbative, expansion. We thereby test, in the context of a concrete problem, the validity of the two technical hypotheses in a previous proof of the convergence of such a Neumann series in the more abstract setting of an arbitrary smooth potential. Not surprisingly, we find that the hypotheses are violated when caustics develop in the classical dynamics; this opens up the interesting future project of extending the methods to momentum space.
The unitary Birkhoff theorem states that any unitary matrix with all row sums and all column sums equal unity can be decomposed as a weighted sum of permutation matrices, such that both the sum of the weights and the sum of the squared moduli of the weights are equal to unity. If the dimension~$n$ of the unitary matrix equals a power of a prime $p$, i.e. if $n=p^w$, then the Birkhoff decomposition does not need all $n!$ possible permutation matrices, as the epicirculant permutation matrices suffice. This group of permutation matrices is isomorphic to the general affine group GA($w,p$) of order only $p^w(p^w-1)(p^w-p)...(p^w-p^{w-1}) ll left( p^w right)!$.
We investigate a class of power series occurring in some problems in quantum optics. Their coefficients are either Gegenbauer or Laguerre polynomials multiplied by binomial coefficients. Although their sums have been known for a long time, we employ here a different method to recover them as higher-order derivatives of the generating function of the given orthogonal polynomials. The key point in our proof consists in exploiting a specific functional equation satisfied by the generating function in conjunction with Cauchys integral formula for the derivatives of a holomorphic function. Special or limiting cases of Gegenbauer polynomials include the Legendre and Chebyshev polynomials. The series of Hermite polynomials is treated in a straightforward way, as well as an asymptotic case of either the Gegenbauer or the Laguerre series. Further, we have succeeded in evaluating the sum of a similar power series which is a higher-order derivative of Mehlers generating function. As a prerequisite, we have used a convenient factorization of the latter that enabled us to employ a particular Laguerre expansion. Mehlers summation formula is then applied in quantum mechanics in order to retrieve the propagator of a linear harmonic oscillator.
We give two conditionally exactly solvable inverse power law potentials whose linearly independent solutions include a sum of two confluent hypergeometric functions. We notice that they are partner potentials and multiplicative shape invariant. The method used to find the solutions works with the two Schrodinger equations of the partner potentials. Furthermore we study some of the properties of these potentials.
In this work, we develop and apply the WKB approximation to several examples of noncommutative quantum cosmology, obtaining the time evolution of the noncommutative universe, this is done starting from a noncommutative quantum formulation of cosmology where the noncommutativity is introduced by a deformation on the minisuperspace variables. This procedure gives a straightforward algorithm to incorporate noncommutativity to cosmology and inflation.
Three programs in Mathematica are presented, which produce expressions for the lowest order and the higher order corrections of the Phase Integral Approximation. First program is pertinent to one ordinary differential equation of the Schrodinger type. The remaining two refer to a set of two such equations.