Introduction

Abstract

Abstract Semiclassical mechanics is a short-wavelength link between classical and quantum mechanics, similar to that between wave and geometrical optics. Its object is to maintain contact with the structure imposed by classical mechanics, without sacrificing quantum mechanical accuracy, or, in the vivid words of Berry and Mount (1972), to ‘sew quantum mechanical flesh onto classical bones’. The overriding principles are that the classical phase space is divided into ‘accessible’ and ‘inaccessible’ regions characteristic of the type of motion, and that the boundaries of these regions impose a classical structure, which is evidenced in the quantum mechanics by interference in the bright accessible regions and exponential decay into the shadow regions. The strength of the classical skeleton is that this structure is maintained whether the observations are made in coordinate space, quantum number space, or some mixed representation. In all cases the central quantity is the classical action, whose dimensions are those of Planck’s constant; on one hand it guides the classical motion, according to the minimum action principle, and on the other it adds a phase to each classical trajectory, which gives rise both to quantum mechanical interference and, by a mathematical extension, to quantum mechanical tunnelling.