Thermodynamics of the harmonic oscillator using coherent states

Universität Osnabrück, Fachbereich Physik Barbarastr. 7, D-49069 Osnabrück, Germany

Received: 31 August 1998
Accepted: 12 January 1999

Abstract

The ongoing discussion whether thermodynamic properties can be extracted from a (possibly approximate) quantum-mechanical time evolution using time averages is fed with an instructive example. It is shown for the harmonic oscillator how the Hilbert space or an appropriately defined phase space must be populated in terms of coherent states in order to obtain the quantum result, respectively the classical one.