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The quantum harmonic oscillator is the quantum-mechanical analog of the classical harmonic oscillator. Because an arbitrary smooth potential can usually be approximated as a harmonic potential at the vicinity of a stable equilibrium point , it is one of the most important model systems in quantum mechanics.
The angular frequency of the underdamped harmonic oscillator is given by =, the exponential decay of the underdamped harmonic oscillator is given by =. The Q factor of a damped oscillator is defined as Q = 2 π × energy stored energy lost per cycle . {\displaystyle Q=2\pi \times {\frac {\text{energy stored}}{\text{energy lost per cycle}}}.}
The Hamiltonian of a simple harmonic oscillator is given by = + where is the linear momentum and the position coordinate. The action variable is given by = where we have used that = is the energy and that the closed trajectory is 4 times the trajectory from 0 to the turning point = /.
In quantum mechanics, the Hamiltonian of a system is an operator corresponding to the total energy of that system, including both kinetic energy and potential energy.Its spectrum, the system's energy spectrum or its set of energy eigenvalues, is the set of possible outcomes obtainable from a measurement of the system's total energy.
The ladder operators of the quantum harmonic oscillator or the "number representation" of second quantization are just special cases of this fact. Ladder operators then become ubiquitous in quantum mechanics from the angular momentum operator , to coherent states and to discrete magnetic translation operators.
The measurable values of the energy of a quantum system are given by the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian operator, while its eigenstates give the possible energy states of the system. A value of energy is said to be degenerate if there exist at least two linearly independent energy states associated with it.
A harmonic oscillator in classical mechanics (A–B) and quantum mechanics (C–H). In (A–B), a ball, attached to a spring, oscillates back and forth.(C–H) are six solutions to the Schrödinger equation for this situation.
In the context of the quantum harmonic oscillator, one reinterprets the ladder operators as creation and annihilation operators, adding or subtracting fixed quanta of energy to the oscillator system. Creation/annihilation operators are different for bosons (integer spin) and fermions (half-integer spin).