Published In

American Journal of Physics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1998

Subjects

Harmonic oscillators, Feynman integrals, Path integrals, Quantum mechanics

Abstract

We present a purely analytical method to calculate the propagator for the quantum harmonic oscillator using Feynman’s path integral. Though the details of the calculation are involved, the general approach uses only matrix diagonalization and well-known integrals, techniques which an advanced undergraduate should understand. The full propagator, including both the prefactor and the classical action, is obtained from a single calculation which involves the exact diagonalization of the discretized action for the system.

Description

Copyright 1998 American Association of Physics Teachers. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Association of Physics Teachers. The following article appeared in American Journal of Physics. June 1998, Vol. 66 Issue 6, p537-540 and may be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.18896

DOI

10.1119/1.18896

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/12844

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