Hamiltonians whose symbols are not simply real valued, but matrix or, more generally, endomorphism valued functions appear in many places in physics, examples being the Dirac equation, multicomponent wave equations like electrodynamics in media, and Yang-Mills theories, and the Born-Oppenheimer approximation in molecular physics. Whereas the semiclassical and WKB approximation of scalar systems...

Solutions obtained by the quasilinearization method (QLM) are compared with the WKB solutions. While the WKB method generates an expansion in powers of h̄, the quasilinearization method (QLM) approaches the solution of the nonlinear equation obtained by casting the Schrödinger equation into the Riccati form by approximating nonlinear terms by a sequence of linear ones. It does not rely on the ex...

In this paper we present a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological model conformally coupled to a massive scalar field where the WKB approximation fails to reproduce the exact solution to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for large Universes. The breakdown of the WKB approximation follows the same pattern than in semiclassical physics of chaotic systems, and it is associated to the development of sma...

We apply a method recently devised by one of the authors to obtain an approximate analytical formula for the spectrum of a quantum anharmonic potential. Due to its general features the method can be applied with minimal effort to general quantum potentials thus allowing very promising applications. PACS numbers: 03.65.Ge,02.30.Mv,11.15.Bt,11.15.Tk ‡ [email protected] The spectrum of a quantum ...

We investigate deviations from the plane wave model in the interaction of charged particles with strong electromagnetic fields. A general result is that integrability of the dynamics is lost when going from lightlike to timelike or spacelike field dependence. For a special scenario in the classical regime we show how the radiation spectrum in the spacelike (undulator) case becomes well-approxim...

We compute the effect of quantum mechanical backreaction on the spectrum of radiation in a dynamical moving mirror model, mimicing the effect of a gravitational collapse geometry. Our method is based on the use of a combined WKB and saddle-point approximation to implement energy conservation in the calculation of the Bogolyubov coefficients, in which we assume that the mirror particle has finit...

This paper is concerned with a 1D Schrödinger scattering problem involving both oscillatory and evanescent regimes, separated by jump discontinuities in the potential function, to avoid "turning points". We derive a non-overlapping domain decomposition method to split the original problem into sub-problems on these regions, both for the continuous and afterwards for the discrete problem. Furthe...

A new method for predicting inflationary cosmological perturbations, based on the Wentzel-KramersBrillouin ~WKB! approximation, is presented. A general expression for the WKB scalar and tensor power spectra is derived. The main advantage of the new scheme of approximation is that it is valid even if the slow-roll conditions are violated. The method is applied to power-law inflation, which allow...

We develop a spectral formulation and a stationary WKB approximation for calculating the probabilities of rare events (large deviations from the mean) in systems of reacting particles with infinite-range interaction, describable by a master equation. We compare the stationary WKB approximation to a recent time-dependent semiclassical approximation developed, for the same class of problems, by E...