12.

2 Motion in a Magnetic Field 679

The problem is Sz-diagonal so we can forget about the spin vari-

able until the end when we reinsert the Zeeman term in the energy
expression.
Since H
' does not depend on 2, we can seek the orbital dependence
of the eigenstates in the factorized form

( 12.25)

where x(y) satisfies

eC ~ fii]
+ 2m
~ X(Y)
> = €X(Y),
~ (12.26)

where e includes a p,-dependent energy shift which we write out ex-

plicitely in (12.34). (12.26) is the eigenvalue equation for a displaced
harmonic ocillator with the frequency
eH
wc = -. (12.27)
mc
wc is the same as the classical cyclotron frequency (12.14). The motion
in a uniform magnetic field is one of the few problems where quantum
mechanics gives results closely resembling those of classical mechanics.
The eigenvalues of (12.26) are

(12.28)

corresponding to the eigenstates

where the H , are Hermite polynomials. As it can be read off from

(12.26), the centre of the oscillator function is displaced to

mEc2
yo = --
eH2
+-cp,
eH
(12.30)

Note the intimate connection between yo and p z .