Group theoretical analysis of a quantum-mechanical three-dimensional quartic anharmonic oscillator

Abstract

This paper illustrates the application of group theory to a quantum-mechanical three-dimensional quartic anharmonic oscillator with Oh symmetry. It is shown that group theory predicts the degeneracy of the energy levels and facilitates the application of perturbation theory and the Rayleigh-Ritz variational method as well as the interpretation of the results in terms of the symmetry of the solutions. We show how to obtain suitable symmetry-adapted basis sets.