Stroboscopic quantization of autonomous systems

Abstract

We introduce a semiclassical quantization method which is based on a stroboscopic description of the classical and the quantum flows. We show that this approach emerges naturally when one is interested in extracting the energy spectrum within a prescribed and finite energy interval. The resulting semiclassical expression involves a finite number of periodic orbits whose energies are in the considered interval. Higher order corrections which reflect the sharp restriction of the spectrum to an interval are explicitely given. The relation to Fourier methods for extracting semiclassical spectra, such as harmonic inversion, is worked out. The constraints due to the finite dimension of the Hilbert space and the unitarity of the restricted quantum evolution operator are important ingredients in this context.