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Combining Spatial Motion and Spin

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Abstract

In this chapter we put together all the techniques studied so far: internal-spin degrees of freedom (Chap. 3) and spatial (motional) degrees of freedom (Chap. 4) are combined with the tensor-product formalism (Chap. 2). We arrive at a complete numerical description of interacting spin-ful particles moving through space. To showcase these powerful tools, we study Rashba coupling as well as the Jaynes–Cummings model.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Remember that \(\mathbbm {1}=|\uparrow \rangle \langle \uparrow |+|\downarrow \rangle \langle \downarrow |\) and \(\hat{S}_z=\frac{1}{2}|\uparrow \rangle \langle \uparrow |-\frac{1}{2}|\downarrow \rangle \langle \downarrow |\).

  2. 2.

    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashba_effect.

  3. 3.

    Naturally, the following calculations would be simpler if we had represented the ground state in the position basis; however, we use this opportunity to show how to calculate in the momentum basis.

  4. 4.

    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaynes-Cummings_model.

  5. 5.

    In a harmonic oscillator of mass m and angular frequency \(\omega \), we usually introduce the position operator \(\hat{x}=\sqrt{\frac{\hbar }{m\omega }}\hat{X}\) and the momentum operator \(\hat{p}=\sqrt{\hbar m \omega }\hat{P}\). Here we restrict our attention to the dimensionless quadratures \(\hat{X}\) and \(\hat{P}\).

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Correspondence to Roman Schmied .

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Schmied, R. (2020). Combining Spatial Motion and Spin. In: Using Mathematica for Quantum Mechanics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7588-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7588-0_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7587-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7588-0

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