Introduction to the Coherent States Approach for Solving Non-linear Physical Problems

Abstract

We summarize some crucial results from mathematical models that help us understand the relevance of generalized coherent states (GCS), a fundamental method used for the description of non-linear problems in physics. We mainly concentrate our review in the following models: ferromagnetism, nonlinear Schrödinger equation with external potential, nonlinear quantum oscillators, Bose -Einstein condensation (BEC) and the DNA quasi-spin model. Such models and some applications of the wide variety these involve are outlined. As variational trial states, the coherent states (CS) allow the estimation of the ground state energies and properties, yielding results which become exact in a number of nonlinear differential equations for dynamical variable of each model. Mainly we concentrate our review on two types of coherent states, The first one are based on the Heisenberg -Weyl group where it is applied the bosonization effect. The second one is based on the SU(2)/U(1) Lie group. For this case when the Hamiltonian and all physical operators are constructed by the elements of a Lie algebra, the generalized coherent states approach is directly applied without bozonization.