Date of Graduation

5-2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Microelectronics-Photonics (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Microelectronics-Photonics

Advisor/Mentor

William G. Harter

Committee Member

Daniel Kennefick

Second Committee Member

Panneer Selvam

Third Committee Member

Surendra P. Singh

Fourth Committee Member

Ken Vickers

Keywords

Pure sciences, Double well potential, Morse oscillators, Quantam interference, Quantam revival, Quantam rotors, Wave packets

Abstract

Analytical eigenfunctions and eigenvalues for the Morse oscillator were applied to investigate the quantum resonant beats and revivals of wave packet propagation. A concise way for exact prediction of the complete revival period of the Morse oscillator was given for the first time. It was suggested that any complete period was made of integer numbers of the minimum or fundamental period. Within the fundamental period, the anharmonicity of this oscillator appeared to cause interesting space-time phenomena that include relatively simple Farey-sum revival structures. In addition, a simple sum of two Morse oscillators led to a double-Morse well whose geometric symmetry provided analytical eigenfunctions and eigenvalues for certain low-lying energy levels. The quantum tunneling between the double-Morse well significantly affected the resonant beats and revivals local to each well, and gave rise to interesting tsunami-like waves in the middle of the double well. Furthermore, quantum rotor wave functions based upon Wigner-D matrix were applied to investigate the quantum resonant beats and revivals that occur in experimentally accessible spin systems. Interesting physical effects in quantum rotors between half-integer spin and integer spin systems were observed to show effects of symmetry. Essentially, the quantum revivals in these quantum systems exhibited number-information aspects of surprisingly simple Farey-sum and Ford circles geometry. Such quantum dynamics will provide a physical insight to further develop matter wave packet technology, and might have applications for quantum information processing and quantum computing.

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