It is shown how using the classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation one can arrive at the time-dependent wave equation. Although the former equation was originally used by E.Schroedinger to get the wave equation, we propose a different approach. In the first place, we do not use the principle of least action and, in addition, we arrive at the time-dependent equation, while Schroedinger (in his first seminal paper) used the least action principle and obtained the stationary wave equation. The proposed approach works for any classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation. In addition, by introducing information loss into the Hamilton-Jacobi equation we derive in an elementary fashion the wave equations (ranging from the Shroedinger to Klein-Gordon, to Dirac equations). We also apply this technique to a relativistic particle in the gravitational field and obtain the respective wave equation. All this supports 't Hooft's proposal about a possibility of arriving at quantum description from a classical continuum in the presence of information loss.
Time-dependent Schroedinger equation represents the basis of any quantum-theoretical approach. The question concerning its proper content in comparison to the classical physics has not been, however, fully answered until now. It will be shown that there is one-to-one physical correspondence between basic solutions (represented always by one Hamiltonian eigenfunction only) and classical ones, as the non-zero quantum potential has not any physical sense, representing only the "numerical" difference between Hamilton principal function and the phase of corresponding wave function in the case of no…
The one dimensional Schroedinger hydrogen atom is an interesting mathematical and physical problem to study bound states, eigenfunctions and quantum degeneracy issues. This 1D physical system gave rise to some intriguing controversy over more than four decades. Presently, still no definite consensus seems to have been reached. We reanalyzed this apparently controversial problem, approaching it from a Fourier transform representation method combined with some fundamental (basic) ideas found in self-adjoint extensions of symmetric operators. In disagreement with some previous claims, we found th…
The trajectory of motion of a scattering electron in the Coulomb potential from the wave function of the Schroedinger equation is presented in two ways, spherical polar coordinates and Temple coordinates, and is compared with each other and with the corresponding motion of classical mechanics. A good correspondence among dynamics by wave functions and the classical dynamics has been acknowledged by comparing computed examples.Detailed computing examples discriminate the optimal dynamics of the wave function that should be verified by an experiment.
We construct a general algorithm generating the analytic eigenfunctions as well as eigenvalues of one-dimensional stationary Schroedinger Hamiltonians. Both exact and quasi-exact Hamiltonians enter our formalism but we focus on quasi-exact interactions for which no such general approach has been considered before. In particular we concentrate on a generalized sextic oscillator but also on the Lame and the screened Coulomb potentials.
It is shown how the essentials of quantum theory, i.e., the Schroedinger equation and the Heisenberg uncertainty relations, can be derived from classical physics. Next to the empirically grounded quantisation of energy and momentum, the only input is given by the assumption of fluctuations in energy and momentum to be added to the classical motion. Extending into the relativistic regime for spinless particles, this procedure leads also to a derivation of the Klein-Gordon equation. Comparing classical Hamiltonian flow with quantum theory, then, the essential difference is given by a vanishing d…
Schroedinger's equation with scalar and vector potentials is shown to describe "nothing but" hopping of a quantum particle on a lattice; any spatial variation of the hopping amplitudes acts like an external electric and/or magnetic field. The main point of the argument is the superposition principle for state vectors; Lagrangians, path integrals, or classical Hamiltonians are not (!) required. Analogously, the Hamiltonian of the free electromagnetic field is obtained as a twofold continuum limit of unitary hopping in Z(N) link configuration space, if gauge invariance and C and P symmetries are…
Within the framework of self-adjoint operator of time in non-relativistic quantum mechanics some properties of solutions of Schroedinger equation, related to Hilbert space formalism, are investigated for two types of time dependent Hamiltonian.
We present a new approach to Hamilton's theory of turns for the groups SO(3) and SU(2) which renders their properties, in particular their composition law, nearly trivial and immediately evident upon inspection. We show that the entire construction can be based on binary rotations rather than mirror reflections.
The intertwining operator technique is applied to difference Schroedinger equations with operator-valued coefficients. It is shown that these equations appear naturally when a discrete basis is used for solving a multichannel Schroedinger equation. New families of exactly solvable multichannel Hamiltonians are found.
For the unitary operator, solution of the Schroedinger equation corresponding to a time-varying Hamiltonian, the relation between the Magnus and the product of exponentials expansions can be expressed in terms of a system of first order differential equations in the parameters of the two expansions. A method is proposed to compute such differential equations explicitly and in a closed form.
Some exactly solvable potentials in the position dependent mass background are generated whose bound states are given in terms of Laguerre- or Jacobi-type $X_1$ exceptional orthogonal polynomials. These potentials are shown to be shape invariant and isospectral to the potentials whose bound state solutions involve classical Laguerre or Jacobi polynomials.
Canonical coordinates for both the Schroedinger and the nonlinear Schroedinger equations are introduced, making more transparent their Hamiltonian structures. It is shown that the Schroedinger equation, considered as a classical field theory, shares with the nonlinear Schroedinger, and more generally with Liouville completely integrable field theories, the existence of a "recursion operator" which allows for the construction of infinitely many conserved functionals pairwise commuting with respect to the corresponding Poisson bracket. The approach may provide a good starting point to get a clea…
We construct one soliton solutions for the nonlinear Schroedinger equation with variable quadratic Hamiltonians in a unified form by taking advantage of a complete (super) integrability of generalized harmonic oscillators. The soliton wave evolution in external fields with variable quadratic potentials is totally determined by the linear problem, like motion of a classical particle with acceleration, and the (self-similar) soliton shape is due to a subtle balance between the linear Hamiltonian (dispersion and potential) and nonlinearity in the Schroedinger equation by the standards of soliton …
It is shown that the eigenvalue problem for the Hamiltonians of the standard form, $H=p^2/(2m)+V(x)$, is equivalent to the classical dynamical equation for certain harmonic oscillators with time-dependent frequency. This is another indication of the central role played by time-dependent harmonic oscillators in quantum mechanics. The utility of the known results for eigenvalue problem in the solution of the dynamical equations of a class of time-dependent harmonic oscillators is also pointed out.
The numerical version of the Hamilton-Jacobi quantization method, recently proposed, is applied to the one dimensional quartic oscillator. A suitable quantization condition is formulated and various energy levels and wave functions are computed. The results very well agree with those obtained by means of the Schroedinger equation, and confirm that the Quantum Hamilton Jacobi approach, which is the exact version of the semiclassical WKB scheme, is a self-contained quantization procedure, equivalent and independent from the Schoedinger's one but more general. Indeed, with respect to this latter,…
In this short communication I generalize the method of obtaining quasi-Feynman formulas described in my previous paper on that topic. The theorem presented allows to obtain the solution to the Cauchy problem for the Schrödinger equation with the Hamiltonian decomposed to a finite sum of operators. The concept of Chernoff tangency is used, and the solution is written in the form of a quasi-Feynman formula as before. Theorem proven is compared to known approximation theorems: Trotter's, Chernoff's, Butko-Schilling-Smolyanov's.
We discuss two topics that are usually considered to be exclusively "quantum": the Schroedinger equation, and the uncertainty principle. We show (or rather recall) that the Schroedinger equation can be derived from Hamilton's equations using the metaplectic representation. We also show that the uncertainty principle, stated in the form of the Robertson-Schroedinger-Heisenberg inequalities can be formulated in perfectly classical terms using the topological notion of symplectic capacity.
We outline a method based on successive canonical transformations which yields a product expansion for the evolution operator of a general (possibly non-Hermitian) Hamiltonian. For a class of such Hamiltonians this expansion involves a finite number of terms, and our method gives the exact solution of the corresponding time-dependent Schroedinger equation. We apply this method to study the dynamics of a general nondegenerate two-level quantum system, a time-dependent classical harmonic oscillator, and a degenerate system consisting of a spin 1 particle interacting with a time-dependent electri…
The following comparison rules for the discrete spectrum of the position-dependent mass (PDM) Schroedinger equation are established. (i) If a constant mass $m_0$ and a PDM $m(x)$ are ordered everywhere, that is either $m_0\leq m(x)$ or $m_0\geq m(x)$, then the corresponding eigenvalues of the constant-mass Hamiltonian and of the PDM Hamiltonian with the same potential and the BenDaniel-Duke ambiguity parameters are ordered. (ii) The corresponding eigenvalues of PDM Hamiltonians with the different sets of ambiguity parameters are ordered if $\nabla^2 (1/m(x))$ has a definite sign. We prove thes…
In this article, we develop quantum mechanics upon the framework of the quantum mechanical Hamilton-Jacobi theory. We will show, that the Schroedinger point of view and the Hamilton-Jacobi point of view are fully equivalent in their description of physical systems, but differ in their descriptive manner. As a main result, a wave function in Hamilton-Jacobi theory can be decomposed into travelling waves in any point in space, not only asymptotically. The well known WKB-theory will be a special result of the more general theory, we will develop below. By the example of the linear potential and t…
Ordering ambiguity associated with the von Roos position dependent mass (PDM) Hamiltonian is considered. An affine locally scaled first order differential introduced, in Eq.(9), as a PDM-pseudo-momentum operator. Upon intertwining our Hamiltonian, which is the sum of the square of this operator and the potential function, with the von Roos d-dimensional PDM-Hamiltonian, we observed that the so-called von Roos ambiguity parameters are strictly determined, but not necessarily unique. Our new ambiguity parameters' setting is subjected to Dutra's and Almeida's [11] reliability test and classified …
Schroedinger's equation says that the Hamiltonian is the generator of time translations. This seems to imply that any reasonable definition of time operator must be conjugate to the Hamiltonian. Then both time and energy must have the same spectrum since conjugate operators are unitarily equivalent. Clearly this is not always true: normal Hamiltonians have lower bounded spectrum and often only have discrete eigenvalues, whereas we typically desire that time can take any real value. Pauli concluded that constructing a general a time operator is impossible (although clearly it can be done in spe…
Adiabatic passage employs a slowly varying time-dependent Hamiltonian to control the evolution of a quantum system along the Hamiltonian eigenstates. For processes of finite duration, the exact time evolving state may deviate from the adiabatic eigenstate at intermediate times, but in numerous applications it is observed that this deviation reaches a maximum and then decreases significantly towards the end of the process. We provide a straightforward theoretical explanation for this welcome but often unappreciated fact. Our analysis emphasizes a separate adiabaticity criterion for high fidelit…
Decoherence of a quantum system induced by the interaction with its environment (measuring medium) may be presented phenomenologically as a continuous (or repeated) fuzzy quantum measurement. The dynamics of the system subject to continuous decoherence (measurement) may be described by the complex-Hamiltonian Schroedinger equation, stochastic Schroedinger equation of a certain type or (nonselectively) by the Lindblad master equation. The formulation of this dynamics with the help of restricted path integrals shows that the dynamics of the measured system depends only on the information recorde…
The well known interpretational difficulties with nonlinear Schrödinger and von Neumann equations can be reduced to the problem of computing multiple-time correlation functions in the absence of Heisenberg picture. Having no Heisenberg picture one often resorts to Zeno-type reasoning which explicitly involves the projection postulate as a means of computing conditional and joint probabilities. Although the method works well in linear quantum mechanics, it completely fails for nonlinear evolutions. We propose an alternative way of performing the same task in linear quantum mechanics and show th…
The Hamilton-Jacobi equation of relativistic quantum mechanics is revisited. The equation is shown to permit solutions in the form of breathers (oscillating/spinning solitons), displaying simultaneous particle-like and wave-like behaviour.
Here we shall consider the idea that the Hamiltonian evolution of a quantum system is generated by sequential observations of the system by a `pseudo-apparatus'. This representation of Hamiltonian dynamics, originally discovered by Belavkin, is a canonical dilation of the Schroedinger equation that reveals a Minkowski space structure outside of the context of Special Relativity. In particular, this formalism gives rise to the notion of a Boosted Schroedinger equation referred to a dilated time increment which is the manifestation of a Lorentz transform in the Minkowski space of the apparatus.
The Principle of Least Action is used with a simple Lagrangian density, involving second-order derivatives of the wave function, to obtain the Schroedinger equation. A Hamiltonian density obtained from this simple Lagrangian density shows that Hamilton's equations also give the Schroedinger equation. This simple Lagrangian density is equivalent to a standard Lagrangian density with first-order derivatives. For a time-independent system the Principle of Least Action reduces to the energy variational principle. For time-dependent systems the Principle of Least Action gives time-dependent approxi…
Starting from the forward and backward infinitesimal generators of bilateral, time-homogeneous Markov processes, the self-adjoint Hamiltonians of the generalized Schroedinger equations are first introduced by means of suitable Doob transformations. Then, by broadening with the aid of the Dirichlet forms the results of the Nelson stochastic mechanics, we prove that it is possible to associate bilateral, and time-homogeneous Markov processes to the wave functions stationary solutions of our generalized Schroedinger equations. Particular attention is then paid to the special case of the Levy-Schr…
We represent low dimensional quantum mechanical Hamiltonians by moderately sized finite matrices that reproduce the lowest O(10) boundstate energies and wave functions to machine precision. The method extends also to Hamiltonians that are neither Hermitian nor PT symmetric and thus allows to investigate whether or not the spectra in such cases are still real. Furthermore, the approach is especially useful for problems in which a position-dependent mass is adopted, for example in effective-mass models in solid-state physics or in the approximate treatment of coupled nuclear motion in molecular …
An asymptotic approach for a Schroedinger type equation with a non selfadjoint slowly varying Hamiltonian of a special type is developed. The Hamiltonian is assumed to be the result of a small perturbation of an operator with a twofold degeneracy (turning) point, which can be diagonalized at this point. The non-adiabatic transformation of modes is studied in the case where two small parameters are dependent: the parameter characterizing an order of the perturbation is a square root of the adiabatic parameter. The perturbation of the Hamiltonian produces a close pair of simple degeneracy points…
The electronic structure of an atom with Z <= 137 can be described by the Dirac equation with the Coulomb field of a point charge Ze. It was believed that the Dirac equation with Z > 137 is inconsistent and physically meaningless because the formula for the lower energy level of the Dirac Hamiltonian formally gives imaginary eigenvalues. But a strict mathematical consideration shows that difficulties with the electronic spectrum for Z > 137 do not arise if the Dirac Hamiltonian is correctly defined as a self-adjoint operator, see [1]. In this article, we brie y summarize the main physical resu…
Berry and Keating conjectured that the classical Hamiltonian H = xp is related to the Riemann zeros. A regularization of this model yields semiclassical energies that behave, in average, as the non trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function. However, the classical trajectories are not closed, rendering the model incomplete. In this paper, we show that the Hamiltonian H = x (p + l_p^2/p) contains closed periodic orbits, and that its spectrum coincides with the average Riemann zeros. This result is generalized to Dirichlet L-functions using different self-adjoint extensions of H. We discuss the …
