https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00476-8
Regular Article
On the position-dependent effective mass Hamiltonian
1
Department of Physics, University of Kalyani, 741235, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
2
Department of Physics, Sree Chaitanya College, 743268, Habra, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India
3
Department of Physics, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, 700108, Kolkata, India
Received:
17
December
2019
Accepted:
19
May
2020
Published online:
1
June
2020
Noncommutativity of position and momentum makes it difficult to formulate the unambiguous structure of the kinetic part of Hamiltonian for the position-dependent effective mass (PDEM). Various existing proposals of writing the viable kinetic part of the Hamiltonian for PDEM conceptually lack from first principle calculation. Starting from the first principle calculation, in this article, we have advocated the proper self-adjoint form of the kinetic part of Hamiltonian for PDEM. We have proposed that ambiguity of construction of viable kinetic part for PDEM can be avoided if one takes the care from the classical-level combination of position and momentum. In the quantum level, the spatial points do not appear in equivalent footing for the measure of inertia (mass). This exhibits the existence of an inertia potential. Thus, the new structure of the kinetic part differs from the existing structure of the kinetic part of Hamiltonian by providing an extra potential like contribution. This inertia potential can be absorbed with the external potential, and the known structure of PDEM can be redefined under this effective potential. This enables us to apply the existing formalism of quantum mechanics. The coherent state structures for the newly proposed form of Hamiltonian are provided for a few simple experimentally important models.
© Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
