The damped Pinney equation and its applications to dissipative quantum mechanics

Abstract

The work considers the damped Pinney equation, defined as the model arising when a linear in velocity damping term is included in the Pinney equation. In the general case the resulting equation does not admit Lie point symmetries or is reducible to a simpler form by any obvious coordinate transformation. In this context the method of Kuzmak-Luke is applied to derive a perturbation solution, for weak damping and slow time-dependence of the frequency function. The perturbative and numerical solutions are shown to be in good agreement. The results are applied to examine the time-evolution of Gaussian shaped wave-functions in the Kostin formulation of dissipative quantum mechanics.