Landau Diamagnetism from the Coherent States of an Electron in a Uniform Magnetic Field

Abstract

A complete set of coherent-state wave packets has been constructed for an electron in a uniform magnetic field. These states are nonspreading packets of minimum uncertainty that follow the classical motion. Use was made of the ladder operators that generate all the eigen-states of the Hamiltonian from any one energy eigenstate. The coherent states are the eigenstates of the two ladder operators that annihilate the zero-angular-momentum ground state. We have calculated the partition function, exploiting advantages of the coherent-state basis. The Landau diamagnetism and the de Haas-van Alphen oscillations are contained in the coherent-state framework.