Quantum Mechanics of Beats between Weakly Coupled Oscillators

Abstract

Although the weakly coupled double pendulum seems to be a standard illustration in classical mechanics, it is seldom mentioned in quantum mechanics. It shares this fate with the damped harmonic oscillator, but while there is a good reason for avoiding the last one in quantum mechanics, the first can be treated with the same procedure as in classical mechanics. The exact solution is then compared with the solutions obtained by time-independent and time-dependent perturbation methods. It turns out that there are some additional steps to be taken, compared to the usual textbook treatment of the time-independent perturbation theory, due to the fact that all the levels of the unperturbed problem are degenerate. It is shown that the diagonalization of the secular matrix in the time-independent problem is equivalent to a problem of rotation of angular momentum operators in function space. The time-dependent problem needs, again, additional steps due to the degeneracy, and it yields the well-known beat-behavior.