Coherent states and the role of the affine group in the quantum mechanics of the Morse potential

Abstract

The coherent states of the Morse potential that have been obtained earlier from supersymmetric quantum mechanics, are shown to be connected with the representations of the affine group of the real line and some of its extensions. This relation is similar to the one between the Heisenberg-Weyl group and the coherent states of the harmonic oscillator. The states that minimize the uncertainty product of the generators of the affine Lie algebra are shown to contain all the coherent states of the Morse oscillator plus the intelligent states of the Morse Hamiltonians with different shape parameter s. The representations of the central extension of the affine group denoted by G0 and its further extension will be shown to define the phase space relevant to the problem by choosing an appropriate orbit of the coadjoint representation of . This allows one to construct a generalized Wigner function on this phase space, which is again essentially in the same relation with the affine group, as the ordinary Wigner function with the Heisenberg-Weyl group.