SEMICLASSICAL QUANTIZATION USING BOGOMOLNYS QUANTUM SURFACE OF SECTION

The efficacy and accuracy of Bogomolny's method of the quantum surface of section are evaluated by applying it to the quantization of the motion of a particle in a smooth two-dimensional potential. This method defines a transfer operator T in terms of classical trajectories of one Poincare crossing; knowledge of T provides information about the eigenstates of the quantum system. By using a more robust quantization criterion than the one proposed by Bogomolny, we are able to locate more than 500 quantum states in both the regular and the chaotic regimes-in most cases unambiguously-and see no reason why the spectra could not be continued indefinitely. The errors of the predictions are comparable in the two regimes, and are roughly constant for increasing excitation, but they grow as a fraction of the (shrinking) mean level spacing. We also show the computed surface of section wave functions, and present other theoretical and practical results related to the technique.