On the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian description of the damped linear harmonic oscillator

In this paper we generalize and improve a method for calculating the period of a classical oscillator and other integrals of physical interest, which was recently developed by some of the authors. We derive analytical expressions that prove to be more accurate than those commonly found in the literature, and test the convergence of the series produced by the approach.

A detailed study of the relativistic classical and quantum mechanics of the massless harmonic oscillator is presented.

The time-dependent Schroedinger equation with time-independent Hamiltonian matrix is a homogeneous linear oscillatory system in canonical form. We investigate whether any classical system that itself is linear, homogeneous, oscillatory and conservative is guaranteed to linearly map into a Schroedinger equation. Such oscillatory classical systems can be analyzed into their normal modes, which are mutually independent, uncoupled simple harmonic oscillators, and the equation of ...

The investigation of quantum-classical correspondence may lead to gain a deeper understanding of the classical limit of quantum theory. We develop a quantum formalism on the basis of a linear-invariant theorem, which gives an exact quantum-classical correspondence for damped oscillatory systems that are perturbed by an arbitrary force. Within our formalism, the quantum trajectory and expectation values of quantum observables are precisely coincide with their classical counter...

In describing a dynamical system, the greatest part of the work for a theoretician is to translate experimental data into differential equations. It is desirable for such differential equations to admit a Lagrangian and/or an Hamiltonian description because of the Noether theorem and because they are the starting point for the quantization. As a matter of fact many ambiguities arise in each step of such a reconstruction which must be solved by the ingenuity of the theoreticia...

We show that the quantization of a simple damped system leads to a self-adjoint Hamiltonian with a family of complex generalized eigenvalues. It turns out that they correspond to the poles of energy eigenvectors when continued to the complex energy plane. Therefore, the corresponding generalized eigenvectors may be interpreted as resonant states. We show that resonant states are responsible for the irreversible quantum dynamics of our simple model.

If a higher derivative theory arises from a transformation of variables that involves time derivatives, a tailor-made Hamiltonian formulation is shown to exist. The details and advantages of this elegant Hamiltonian formulation, which differs from the usual Ostrogradsky approach to higher derivative theories, are elaborated for mechanical systems and illustrated for simple examples. Both a canonical space and a set of constraints emerge naturally from the transformation rule ...

It is most common to construct the Hamiltonian function and Hamilton's canonical equations through a Legendre transformation of the Lagrangean function or through the central equation. These common perspectives, however, seem abstract and detached from classical analytical dynamics. A new and different approach is presented in which the Hamiltonian function is created as one investigates d'Alembert's equation of motion. This formulation directly ties the Hamiltonian function ...

In the framework of the Lindblad theory for open quantum systems the damping of the harmonic oscillator is studied. A generalization of the fundamental constraints on quantum mechanical diffusion coefficients which appear in the master equation for the damped quantum oscillator is presented; the Schr\"odinger and Heisenberg representations of the Lindblad equation are given explicitly. On the basis of these representations it is shown that various master equations for the dam...

In this paper we discuss mechanical systems with inequality constraints. We demonstrate how such constraints can be taken into account by proper modification of the action which describes the original unconstrained dynamics. To illustrate this approach we consider a harmonic oscillator in the model with limiting velocity. We compare the behavior of such an oscillator with the behavior of a relativistic oscillator and demonstrated that when an amplitude of the oscillator is la...