A convergent iterative solution of the quantum double-well potential

DOI10.1006/APHY.2001.6187MaRDI QIDQ5956414zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors R. Friedberg, T. D. Lee, Wenqiang Zhao, A. Cimenser

Publication date 20 February 2002

Published in Annals of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105142

Perturbation theories for operators and differential equations in quantum theory (81Q15)

Abstract: We present a new convergent iterative solution for the two lowest quantum wave functions

p s i_{e v}

and

p s i_{o d}

of the Hamiltonian with a quartic double well potential

V

in one dimension. By starting from a trial function, which is by itself the exact lowest even or odd eigenstate of a different Hamiltonian with a modified potential

V + d e l t a V

, we construct the Green's function for the modified potential. The true wave functions,

p s i_{e v}

or

p s i_{o d}

, then satisfies a linear inhomogeneous integral equation, in which the inhomogeneous term is the trial function, and the kernel is the product of the Green's function times the sum of

d e l t a V

, the potential difference, and the corresponding energy shift. By iterating this equation we obtain successive approximations to the true wave function; furthermore, the approximate energy shift is also adjusted at each iteration so that the approximate wave function is well behaved everywhere. We are able to prove that this iterative procedure converges for both the energy and the wave function at all

x

.

Review text

The authors look at the lowest even and odd eigenstate \(\psi_{ev}\) and \(\psi_{od}\) of the one-dimensional Hamiltonian with a quartic double-well potential. In order to obtain successive approximations to \(\psi_{ev}\) and \(\psi_{od}\), a modified potential is introduced and the lowest eigenfunction \(\varphi\) of the corresponding modified Hamiltonian serves as the zeroth order approximation to \(\psi_{ev}\). By iterating an inhomogeneous integral equation involving \(\varphi\) and the difference between the double-well potential and the modified potential, approximate solutions \(f_n\) and energies \({\mathcal E}_n\) are obtained and it is shown that both of them converge as \(n\) tends to infinity. In subsequent sections an extension of this iterative procedure is presented which yields approximations to \(\psi_{od}\). A particular example is discussed in an appendix.

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