The Dirac factorization method and the harmonic oscillator

Abstract

We apply the Dirac factorization method to the nonrelativistic harmonic oscillator and, more in general, to Hamiltonians with a generic potential. It is shown that this procedure naturally leads to a supersymmetric formulation of the problems under study. It is also speculated on the physical meaning underlying this method and it is suggested that the vacuum field fluctuations can be viewed as the spontaneous emission of the associated two-level system, whose quantization is due to the noncommuting nature of the harmonic oscillator canonical variables.