English

Equivalence between free and harmonically trapped quantum particles

Quantum Physics 2010-08-25 v1 Atomic Physics Computational Physics

Abstract

It is shown that general solutions of the free-particle Schroedinger equation can be mapped onto solutions of the Schroedinger equation for the harmonic oscillator. This is done in such a way that the time evolution of a free particle subjected to a sudden transition to a harmonic potential can be described by a simple coordinate transformation applied at the transition time. This procedure is computationally more efficient than either state-projection or propagator techniques. A concatenation of the map and its inverse allows us to map from one harmonic oscillator to another with a different spring constant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1008.3929,
  title  = {Equivalence between free and harmonically trapped quantum particles},
  author = {Ole Steuernagel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1008.3929},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

3 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:04:14.807Z