Skip to main content

Questions tagged [coherent-states]

The specific quantum state of the quantum harmonic oscillator, often described as a state which has dynamics most closely resembling the oscillatory behavior of a classical harmonic oscillator. It obeys the minimal uncertainty relation in Heisenberg's uncertainty relationship.

18 votes
2 answers
4k views

What is a coherent state?

In quantum mechanics, what exactly is a coherent state, and how does it differ from other states?
wrongusername's user avatar
15 votes
2 answers
876 views

Countable basis of coherent states used to express coherent states

Let $|\alpha \rangle$ be coherent state in Fock space. According to the paper "Coherent-state representation for the photon density operator" by Cahill (Phys. Rev. 138, B1566 (1965), §VII), every ...
yasalami's user avatar
  • 487
15 votes
2 answers
2k views

How are coherent states in the real world made?

Coherent states are quantum states that are said to act "as classically as possible". You can define coherent states for the harmonic oscillator, or more generally for any collection of harmonic ...
knzhou's user avatar
  • 103k
13 votes
3 answers
3k views

Is the vacuum state a coherent state?

I'm asking because I got introduced to the state $|0\rangle$ as a fock-state. Nevertheless: $$ \hat{a} |0\rangle = 0 |0 \rangle $$ It is an eigenstate of $\hat{a}$ with eigenvalue $0$, and it can be ...
Quantumwhisp's user avatar
  • 6,763
12 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why is laser light described by a coherent state?

This is a follow-up to this recent answer by Wouter to this related question from 2015, and a comment by Emilio Pisanty underneath. I have read the papers by Mølmer, Bartlett et al., Wiseman, and ...
The Vee's user avatar
  • 1,347
11 votes
2 answers
1k views

Why use coherent state path integral? What is its motivation or goal?

In almost all textbooks of quantum field theory for high energy, they insert the position and momentum eigenstate to formulate the path integral. While in condensed matter field theory, they insert ...
346699's user avatar
  • 5,971
10 votes
4 answers
663 views

How to compute expectation value $\langle e^{iH}\rangle$ for quadratic Hamiltonians?

I have a rather basic, but actually non-trivial question: We consider a bosonic system with creation operators $\hat{a}_i^\dagger$ and annihilation operators $\hat{a}_j$ and vacuum state $|0\rangle$ ...
LFH's user avatar
  • 740
9 votes
3 answers
3k views

Eigenstates of the creation operator

We know that coherent states $\vert\alpha\rangle$ are eigenvectors of the annihilation operator $\hat{a}$, i.e. $$ \hat{a} \vert\alpha\rangle = \alpha \vert\alpha\rangle $$ while the creation operator ...
m137's user avatar
  • 1,211
9 votes
2 answers
10k views

What does coherent superposition mean?

There is only one coherent state: $$|\alpha\rangle=e^{-\frac{|\alpha|^2}{2}}\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{\alpha^n}{\sqrt{n!}}|n\rangle $$ Also, a pure state does not mean a coherent state. But what does ...
diff's user avatar
  • 701
9 votes
1 answer
663 views

Calculating free energy from coherent state path integral

Edit: It turns out that problem encountered in this question is not limited to BdG Hamiltonians. I am having trouble in using the coherent state path integral approach to calculate the free energy. ...
Zhengyuan Yue's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
446 views

Equivalence between grassmann fermion states and $SO(2N,\mathbb{R})$ fermion coherent states

I am importing this question from https://www.physicsoverflow.org/39342/equivalence-between-grassmann-fermion-mathbb-fermion-coherent Cahill and Glauber in the paper 'Density operators for Fermions' ...
half_degree_of_freedom's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
1k views

In what sense are spin coherent states "classical"?

Spin coherent states are often introduced as "the most classical states of a finite-dimensional system", or as the analogous of coherent states of light for finite-dimensional systems. See e....
glS's user avatar
  • 14.8k
8 votes
2 answers
912 views

Definition of spatial and temporal coherence in QM?

It is often said that lasers are spatially and temporally coherent. Is there a simple definition of spatial and temporal coherence in the language of quantum mechanics? More specifically, can these be ...
zzz's user avatar
  • 2,857
7 votes
4 answers
2k views

Derivation of $P$ representation of the thermal density operator

I'm trying to derive the P representation for the thermal state $$ \rho = \sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{\mathrm{e}^{-\beta \omega n}}{Z} |n\rangle \langle n | $$ where $\beta$ is the inverse temperature, $...
oweydd's user avatar
  • 455
7 votes
2 answers
984 views

Basic question on holomorphic formalism in QM

In my course, the teacher introduced us the holomorphic formalism in Quantum Mechanics. What I basically understood is that initially, we work in the Hilbert space of square integrable functions $\...
StarBucK's user avatar
  • 1,450

15 30 50 per page
1
2 3 4 5
16