1959•The Journal of Chemical PhysicsRequires access
On the Use of Harmonic Oscillator Wave Functions in the Treatment of Anharmonic Crystals
Thomas H. Walnut
Open publisher page 3 citations
Abstract
An analysis is made of the quantum-mechanical treatment of a crystal as a perturbed harmonic oscillator. The relative magnitudes of the elements of the Hamiltonian matrix with harmonic oscillator wave functions as a basis, are obtained for an anharmonic crystal. It is found that the harmonic oscillator wave functions are extremely poor approximations (in the ordinary sense) to the true wave functions.