The harmonic oscillator on Riemannian and Lorentzian configuration spaces of constant curvature

Abstract

The harmonic oscillator as a distinguished dynamical system can be defined not only on the Euclidean plane but also on the sphere and on the hyperbolic plane, and more generally on any configuration space with constant curvature and metric of any signature, either Riemannian (definite positive) or Lorentzian (indefinite). In this paper we study the main properties of these “curved” harmonic oscillators simultaneously on any such configuration space, using a Cayley–Klein (CK)-type approach, with two free parameters κ1,κ2 which altogether correspond to the possible values for curvature and signature type: the generic Riemannian and Lorentzian spaces of constant curvature (sphere S2, hyperbolic plane H2, AntiDeSitter sphere AdS1+1, and DeSitter sphere dS1+1) appear in this family, with Euclidean and Minkowski spaces as flat particular cases. We solve the equations of motion for the curved harmonic oscillator and obtain explicit expressions for the orbits by using three different methods: by direct integration, by obtaining the general CK version of Binet’s equation, and finally as a consequence of its superintegrable character. The orbits are conics with center at the potential origin on any CK space, thereby extending this well known Euclidean property to any constant curvature configuration space. The final part of the article, that has a more geometric character, presents pertinent results of the theory of conics on spaces of constant curvature.