Tuesday, January 17, 2017

homework and exercises - Semiclassical quantization of bouncing ball


Consider an elastically bouncing ball of mass m and energy E. This has a triangular potential V(x) = {mgxif x>0,if x<0,

where the x-axis points upwards. Let =m=g=1, so that the maximum height reached is E.


The classical frequency of motion is ω=π2E.

I can recall there is a quantization rule that says that the spacing between energy levels equals the classical frequency (in the semiclassical regime). This would imply that En+1EnE1/2n
so Enn2.
However, the area in phase space enclosed by the orbit is proportional to E3/2. This area must be an integer times 2π, which gives a different quantization condition Enn2/3.
What went wrong? I am pretty sure the second result is correct, but why is the first result wrong?




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