The spectral Phase-Amplitude representation of a wave function revisited

Abstract

The phase and amplitude (Ph-A) of a wave function vary slowly and monotonically with distance, in contrast to the wave function that can be highly oscillatory. Hence an attractive feature of the Ph-A representation is that it requires far fewer meshpoints than for the wave function itself. In 1930 Milne developed an equation for the phase and the amplitude functions (W. E. Milne, Phys. Rev. 35, 863 (1930)), and in 1962 Seaton andPeach (M. J. Seaton and G. Peach, Proc. Phys. Soc. 79 1296 (1962)) developed an iterative method for solving Milne's Ph-A equations. Since the zero'th order term of the iteration is identical to the WKB approximation, there is a close relationship between the Ph-A and the WKB representations of a wave function. The objective of the present study is to show that a spectral Chebyshev expansion method to solve Seaton and Peach's iteration scheme is feasible, and requires very few meshpoints for the whole radial interval. Hence this method provides an economical and accurate way to calculate wave functions out to large distances. In a numerical example for which the potential decreased slowly with distance as 1/r^3, the whole radial range of [0-2000] covered with 301 mesh points (and Chbyshev basis functions). The first order iteration of the Ph-A wave function was found to have an accuracy better than 1%, and was always more accurate than the WKB wave function.