Systematic Convergence in Applying the Variational Method to Anharmonic Oscillator Potentials

By Thomas L. Johnson III, Elizabeth R. Hegdahl, Andrew R. Ward, and Stanley E. Schnell, Department of Physics, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Abstract

We applied the variational method to determine the ground and first excited state energies of quartic and sextic anharmonic oscillator potentials.  Starting from two sets of trial wave functions, we showed that by introducing additional terms, the energy eigenvalues gradually converge to those obtained from the Runge-Kutta numerical integration method.

• Read the Paper

 Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader