Abstract
The harmonic oscillator is an important model for various reasons. In solid-state physics, for example, a crystal is modeled as a large number of coupled harmonic oscillators. Using the notion of “normal modes,”this model is then transformed into independent one-dimensional harmonic oscillators with different frequencies. In the quantum mechanical setting, the excitations of the different normal modes are called phonons.
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Hall, B.C. (2013). The Harmonic Oscillator. In: Quantum Theory for Mathematicians. Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol 267. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7116-5_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7116-5_11
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Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-7115-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7116-5
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