Power-like potentials: From the Bohr—Sommerfeld energies to exact ones

Abstract

For one-dimensional power-like potentials [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], the Bohr–Sommerfeld energies (BSE) extracted explicitly from the Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization condition are compared with the exact energies. It is shown that for the ground state as well as for all positive parity states the BSE are always above the exact ones as opposed to the negative parity states where the BSE remain above the exact ones for [Formula: see text] but below them for [Formula: see text]. The ground state BSE as function of [Formula: see text] are of the same order of magnitude as the exact energies for linear [Formula: see text], quartic [Formula: see text] and sextic [Formula: see text] oscillators but their relative deviation grows with [Formula: see text], reaching the value 4 at [Formula: see text]. For physically important cases [Formula: see text], for the 100th excited state BSE coincide with exact ones in 5–6 figures. It is demonstrated that by modifying the right-hand side of the Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization condition by introducing the so-called WKB correction [Formula: see text] (coming from the sum of higher-order WKB terms taken at the exact energies or from the accurate boundary condition at turning points) to the so-called exact WKB condition one can reproduce the exact energies. It is shown that the WKB correction is a small, bounded function [Formula: see text] for all [Formula: see text]. It grows slowly with increasing [Formula: see text] for fixed quantum number [Formula: see text], while it decays with quantum number growth at fixed [Formula: see text]. It is the first time when for quartic and sextic oscillators the WKB correction and energy spectra (and eigenfunctions) are found in explicit analytic form with a relative accuracy of [Formula: see text] (and [Formula: see text]).