Three Dimensional Confinement : WKB Revisited

Abstract

An alternate formalism is developed to determine the energy eigenvalues of quantum mechanical systems, confined within a rigid impenetrable spherical box of radius $r_0$, in the framework of Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation. Instead of considering the Langer correction for the centrifugal term, the approach adopted here is that of Hainz and Grabert : The centrifugal term is expanded perturbatively (in powers of $\hbar$), decomposing it into 2 terms -- the classical centrifugal potential and a quantum correction. Hainz and Grabert found that this method reproduced the exact energies of the hydrogen atom, to the first order in $\hbar$, with all higher order corrections vanishing. In the present study, this formalism is extended to the case of radial potentials under hard wall confinement, to check whether the same argument holds good for such confined systems as well. As explicit examples, 3 widely known potentials are studied, which are of considerable importance in the theoretical treatment of various atomic phenomena involving atomic transitions, viz., the 3-dimensional harmonic oscillator, the hydrogen atom, and the Hulthen potential.