Quantum mechanics with orthogonal polynomials

Abstract

We present a formulation of quantum mechanics based on orthogonal polynomials. The wavefunction is expanded over a complete set of square integrable basis in configuration space where the expansion coefficients are orthogonal polynomials in the energy. Information about the corresponding physical systems (both structural and dynamical) are derived from the properties of these polynomials. We demonstrate that an advantage of this formulation is that the class of exactly solvable non-relativistic quantum mechanical problems becomes larger than in the conventional formulation (see, for example, Table 1 in the text).