New approach to semiclassical analysis in mechanics

A new method is proposed for constructing approximate solutions to the Schrodinger equation. In place of the wave function, its Gaussian-windowed Fourier transform is used as the fundamental entity. This allows an intuitively attractive connection to be made with a family of classical trajectories and, at all times, the wave function is inferred from the present state of these trajectories. The fact that the connection between the wave function and the classical trajectories is consistently constructed in phase space allows this method to be free of the limitations of other methods. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0022-2488(99)02803-0].