A new perturbative expansion of the time evolution operator associated with a quantum syste.pdfVIP

A new perturbative expansion of the time evolution operator 5 associated with a quantum system 0 0 2 g P. Aniello ∗ u A Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Napoli, and 2 Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche dell’Universit`a di Napoli “Federico II”, 1 Complesso Universitario di Monte S. Angelo, Via Cintia - 80126 Napoli, Italy v 7 1 0 1st February 2008 8 0 5 0 / Abstract h p A novel expansion of the evolution operator associated with a – in general, time-dependent t- – perturbed quantum Hamiltonian is presented. It is shown that it has a wide range of n possible realizations that can be fitted according to computational convenience or to satisfy a specific requirements. As a remarkable example, the quantum Hamiltonian describing a u q laser-driven trapped ion is studied in detail. : v Keywords: evolution operator, time-dependent perturbation theory, Magnus expansion. i X r a 1 Introduction The explicit determination of the evolution operator associated with a quantum system — namely, the determination of its explicit action on the state vectors, or, equivalently, on a given orthonormal basis — is, in general, a ‘touchy business’. If the Hamiltonian of the system does not depend on time and has the form of the sum of a solvable unperturbed Hamiltonian plus an analytic perturbation, one can use the tools of standard perturbation theory [1] for linear operators, based on the e