Calculating Hamiltonian matrix elements in a chaotic system

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
1 reply · 2K views
Pyrus96
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
The system in which I tried to calculate the Hamiltonian matrix was a particle in a stadium (Billiard stadium). And I used the principle where we take a rectangle around the stadium in which the parts outside the stadium have a very high potential V0.
We know the wave function of a rectangular potential well and through this I found the following formula for the Hamiltonian matrix elements:
$$H_{nm} = [(\frac{m_{1}}{a_{1}})^{2} +(\frac{m_{2}}{a_{2}})^{2}]\delta_{nm} + V_{0}v_{nm}$$
where vnm is given by:
$$v_{nm} = \int_{\Gamma^{'}}\phi_{n}\phi_{m}$$
where ##\Gamma^{'}## denotes the area in the rectangle which isn't part of the stadium. And the wave functions are given by:
$$\phi_{m_{1},m_{2}}(x_{1},x_{2}) = \int sin(\frac{\pi m_{1}x_{1}}{a_{1}})sin(\frac{\pi m_{2}x_{2}}{a_{2}})$$
but here's my problem, the system we work in is two dimensional and thus we get energy levels corresponding to the doublets: ##n = (n_{1},n_{2})## and ##m = (m_{1},m_{2})##. How am I supposed to interpret the matrix with this because I can't imagine a matrix from that can correspond to ##H_{(2,1)x(1,1)}##

Please note that I didn't bother to write several constants in front of the formula of the hamiltonian and the wave function because they don't matter to the answer.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
It is difficult to say, what is your final objective with those matrix elements but they will be just a version of your first formula
$$
H_{\mu, \nu} = \epsilon_{\mu} \delta_{\mu, \nu} + V_0 v_{\mu, \nu},
$$
where ##\mu## and ##\nu## are some parametrizations of states in an rectangular box, ##\epsilon_\mu## are respective energies and so on. For instance, ##|\mu \rangle = |m_1, m_2 \rangle ## and
$$
\langle \mu | H | \nu \rangle =: H_{\mu, \nu} = H_{m_1, m_2; n_1, n_2} : = \langle m_1, m_2 | H | n_1, n_2 \rangle =
\int dx_1 \ dx_2 \ \phi_{m_1, m_2}^*(x_1, x_2) \widehat{H} \phi_{n_1, n_2}(x_1, x_2).
$$
You deal with such "direct product" matrices in a way very similar to usual matrices. For example,
$$
\langle \mu | \widehat{A} \widehat{B} | \nu \rangle = \sum_\lambda A_{\mu, \lambda} B_{\lambda, \nu} =
\sum_{l_1, l_2} \langle \mu | \widehat{A} | l_1, l_2 \rangle \langle l_1, l_2 | \widehat{B} | \nu \rangle
$$
and so on.