Re-examining the value of old quantization and the Bohr atom approach

Abstract

We use old quantization to predict features of the energy spectrum for bound states in spherically symmetric potentials. We review the application of this method to simple quantum mechanical systems with known analytic results and show that old quantization, while not generally capable of predicting the exact quantum-mechanical spectrum, does consistently give useful information. We then apply the method to a logarithmic potential and compare the results with a numerically calculated spectrum. Finally, we use these techniques to predict the number of bound states in the Yukawa potential and again compare the results with those obtained numerically. In all cases old quantization provides good predictive power for the main features of the true quantum-mechanical problem, and thus can serve as a “back-of-the-envelope” technique for providing rough, qualitative information about the system.