The noncommutative harmonic oscillator in more than one dimension

Abstract

The noncommutative harmonic oscillator, with noncommutativity not only in position space but also in phase space, in arbitrary dimension is examined. It is shown that the *-genvalue problem, which replaces the Schrödinger problem in this case, can be decomposed into separate harmonic oscillator equations for each dimension. The two-dimensional noncommutative harmonic oscillator (four noncommutative phase-space dimensions) is investigated in greater detail. The requirement of the existence of rotationally symmetric solutions leads to a two parameter harmonic oscillator which is completely solved in this case. The angular momentum operator is derived and its *-genvalue problem is shown to be equivalent to the usual eigenvalue problem of the *-genfunction related wave function. The *-genvalues of the angular momentum are found to depend on the energy difference of the oscillations in the two dimensions. Furthermore two examples of a symmetric noncommutative harmonic oscillators are analyzed. The first is the noncommutative two-dimensional Landau problem with harmonic oscillator potential, which shows degeneracy in the energy levels for certain critical values of the noncommutativity parameters, and the second is the three-dimensional harmonic oscillator with non-commuting coordinates and momenta. © 2002 American Institute of Physics.