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Coherent States

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Compendium of Quantum Physics

Coherent states (of the harmonic oscillator) were introduced by Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) at the very beginning of quantum mechanics in response to a complaint by Lorentz that Schrödinger's ► wave function did not display classical motion. Schrödinger obtained solutions that were Gaussians having the width of the ground state. The expectation values of the coordinate and momentum for these Gaussian solutions oscillate in time in just the same way as the coordinate and momentum in the classical theory of the harmonic oscillator.

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Primary Literature

  1. Schrödinger, E.: Der stetige übergang von der Mikro-zur Makromechanik. Naturwiss. 14, 664 (1926). Translated into English in Schrödinger, E.: Collected Papers in Wave Mechanics. London, Blackie & Son (1928), p. 41

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Milonni, P., Nieto, M.M. (2009). Coherent States. In: Greenberger, D., Hentschel, K., Weinert, F. (eds) Compendium of Quantum Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70626-7_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70626-7_31

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