Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2020) 135: 149
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00172-7

Review

Rising and lowering operator approach to the problem of a charged particle in a uniform magnetic field

¹ Departamento de Sistemas Complejos, Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Apartado Postal 20-364, 01000, Mexico City, Mexico
² Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Apartado Postal 20-364, 01000, Mexico City, Mexico
³ Instituto de informática, Universidad de la Sierra Sur, Col. Ciudad Universitaria, C.P. 70800, Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz, Oaxaca, México
⁴ Área de Física Teórica y Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco, Av. San Pablo 180, Col. Reynosa-Tamaulipas, 02200, Mexico City, Mexico

^* e-mail: vickkun@fisica.unam.mx

Received: 16 August 2019
Accepted: 4 November 2019
Published online: 28 January 2020

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the quantization of cyclotron orbits for a 2D non-relativistic and spinless charged particle under the influence of a static and uniform magnetic field, the Landau problem. We follow the algebraic approach of rising and lowering operators. The Hamiltonian is expressed in terms of the usual rising and lowering operators of an isotropic quantum oscillator. Through a Bogoliubov transformation, we show that the Hamiltonian may be reduced to the one of a quantum oscillator that accounts for the formation of infinitely degenerate Landau levels. The explicit form of the position-space wave functions of Fock–Darwin states for a vanishing parabolic confinement potential is worked out by applying the techniques of ladder operators and the induction method. To explore the internal dynamics of the electron states, we compute the Fock–Darwin states’ density currents expressing them in terms of the ladder operators. In the supplementary material, we provide the reader with Mathematica algorithm that can help perform some of the calculations exposed in the paper. The charged particle in a magnetic field is used to explore some of the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics as commuting operators, simultaneous eigenstates, degeneracy, rising and lowering operators, etc. This approach can be used as supplementary material in undergraduate final-year courses like quantum mechanics or solid state physics.