Saturday 20 August 2016

Why is the energy of quantum harmonic oscillator independent of its amplitude?


The energy of a harmonic oscillator with amplitude $A$, frequency $\omega$, and mass $m$ is


$$E=\frac 12 m \omega^2A^2 \, .$$


It is intuitive to think that the energy depends on the amplitude because more the amplitude means that the oscillator has more energy, and similarly if the angular frequency is high even then the energy will be more.


Now let's consider a quantum harmonic oscillator (QHO). The energy is $$E=\left( n+ \frac 12 \right ) h\nu \, .$$ No amplitude term is there! This is odd because, even if you argue that we are dealing in microscopic domain, we all can agree to the fact that, in general for any mass oscillating under some force, if we have more energy then the oscillator will move farther from its mean position and therefore will have more amplitude.


The relation of energy of QHO can't be wrong, where else the above conception of energy for an oscillator also doesn't seems to be wrong.




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