A simple derivation of the WKB approximation

Notes by Sergei Winitzki

DRAFT October 7, 2005
1 Motivation
The WKB approximation is ordinarily introduced in
courses of theoretical physics when one begins studying
quantum mechanics. However, the WKB approximation
can be seen as a purely mathematical technique that has
little to do with quantum physics. In fact, the WKB approx-
imation was rediscovered by physicists after it has been
long known to mathematicians under a different name.
Here I will try to present some elementary derivations of
the WKB approximation.
2 The problem
The WKB approximation is used when we need to solve the
equation of the harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent
frequency,
d
2
x
dt
2
+
2
(t)x = 0, (1)
where x(t) is the unknown function and (t) is a known
function (the frequency).
The WKB approximation says that the solution x(t) is ap-
proximately given by the ansatz
x
WKB
(t) =
1
_
(t)
exp
_
i
_
(t)dt
_
(2)
if the function (t) is slow-changing with t. Solutions with
the plus and the minus signs are linearly independent and
can be combined in a linear combination, so that the (ap-
proximate) general solution is
A
_
(t)
exp
_
i
_
(t)dt
_
+
B
_
(t)
exp
_
i
_
(t)dt
_
, (3)
where A, B are constants.
The approximation is good if

d
dt

2
. (4)
This condition means that (t) changes very little,
i.e.

d
dt

t , during one period of oscillation, t 1/.

This is the precise meaning of the condition that (t) should
be slow-changing.
We have for simplicity assumed that
2
> 0 for all t;
in case
2
(t) becomes zero or negative for some values of
t, the basic formula is still valid (we need to treat (t) as
complex-valued function) but there are several subtleties
in how one glues the solutions in different intervals of t. I
shall not discuss these issues here.
3 Derivation of Eq. (2)
Here is a simple derivation that involves a little guess-
ing. We know that if = const then the solutions are
x = exp (it). The phase t would seem to be general-
ized as
_
(t)dt if is time-dependent. Therefore it appears
plausible that the solution might be
x exp
_
i
_
(t)dt
_
. (5)
This is indeed an approximate solution of Eq. (1) which is
less precise than Eq. (2). This solution describes oscillations
with a constant amplitude. To improve the precision, we
look for a slow-changing amplitude function A(t) such that
x(t) = A(t) exp
_
i
_
(t)dt
_
(6)
is a more precise solution of Eq. (1). We substitute Eq. (6)
into Eq. (1) and derive the following equation for A(t),

A
A

_
i + 2i

A
A
_
= 0. (7)
[We have denoted time derivatives by dots. To derive this
equation, it is convenient to rewrite Eq. (1) as
d
dt
_
x
x
_
+
_
x
x
_
2
+
2
= 0 (8)
and then substitute
x
x
=

A
A
i (9)
into that.] Now since A(t) is by assumption a slow-
changing function, we may disregard

A(t) in Eq. (7) and
then obtain the desired result, A(t) = const/
_
(t).
Another derivation is somewhat more formal but in-
volves less guessing. We look at Eq. (5) and notice that
maybe (t) is not quite the right frequency to use. So we
assume that x(t) will be of the form
x(t) exp
_
i
_
L(t)dt
_
, (10)
where L(t) is some unknown function; let us now derive
what this L(t) must be. Substituting Eq. (10) into Eq. (8)
gives the following equation for L(t),
i

L L
2
+
2
= 0, (11)
and it follows that the function L(t) must be complex-
valued. So we write L(t) = W(t) iB(t), where the choice
of the sign is the same as above, and W(t) and B(t) are
some real-valued and (so far) unknown functions. Then we
substitute this into Eq. (11) and separate the real and the
imaginary parts of that equation. We nd that

B B
2
=
2
W
2
, (12)

W 2WB = 0. (13)
1
The second equation can be immediately solved,
B =

W
2W
, (14)
and then we nd a closed equation for W,

W
2W

3
4

W
2
W
2
=
2
W
2
. (15)
An approximate solution of Eq. (15) is W(t) (t) if (t) is
slow-changing (then the derivatives of W are small and can
be neglected). Therefore B = /(2) and Eq. (10) becomes
x(t) C exp
_
i
_
(t)dt
_

2
dt
_
=
C

exp
_
i
_
(t)dt
_
. (16)
4 WKB approximation as a series ex-
pansion
Above we have used the approximate solution W(t) (t)
of Eq. (15). Can we perhaps nd a more precise W(t)? One
possibility is to rewrite Eq. (15) as
W =

_

W
2W

3
4

W
2
W
2
_
(17)
and simply substitute W(t) = (t) into the right-hand side.
Since by assumption the derivatives of are small, the
expression

W
2W

3
4

W
2
W
2
(18)
will be a small correction to
2
inside the square root, and
thus we shall obtain a small correction to W .
To make the smallness of these corrections somewhat
more transparent, let us introduce a formal parameter into
Eq. (17) and rewrite it as
W =

_

W
2W

3
4

W
2
W
2
_
. (19)
The actual value of must be = 1 since we do not really
wish to modify Eq. (17). However, now the smallness is
labeled by , and for instance any terms multiplied by
2
will certainly be smaller than any terms with . So we can
expand Eq. (19) in Taylor series in , e.g.
W

2
_

W
2W

3
4

W
2
W
2
_
+..., (20)
and also assume that W(t) is itself a power series in ,
W(t) = +S
1
(t) +
2
S
2
(t) +... (21)
Now we can compute the terms S
1
, S
2
, etc., one by one,
simply by substituting Eq. (21) into Eq. (20) and by collect-
ing terms with equal powers of . This task can be easily
performed on a computer using an algebraic manipulation
system such as Maple or Mathematica. The rst terms of
the series (21) are
W(t) =
_
1
4

2

3
8

2

3
_
+
2
_
1
16

(4)

4

5
8
...

5

13
32

2

5
+
99
32

2

6

297
128

3

7
_
+...
-5 10
1.5
5
0
-0.5
0 -10
1
-1
0.5
-1.5
Figure 1: The WKB approximation (red curve) and the exact
solution (green curve) for (t) = 1 + 0.6 tanh(t/2). The
function (t) is plotted in yellow.
0.5
0
40
-0.5
1
-1
0 20 10 30
Figure 2: The WKB approximation (red curve) and the ex-
act solution (green curve) for (t) = 1 + 0.06 cos(2t). The
function (t) is plotted in yellow.
Please note: There is no general formula for the n-th term
of this series! Also, this series usually does not converge
to an exact solution. It is an asymptotic series and only a
certain number of terms can be used to approximate the
function W(t). Once W(t) is approximately determined,
we use Eq. (14) to nd
x(t)
const
_
W(t)
exp
_
i
_
t
t
0
W(t

)dt

_
. (22)
5 Examples
Here are some numerical examples of how well the WKB
approximation works, for some specic functions (t).
The rst example is (t) = 1 + 0.6 tanh(t/2). The exact
(numerically obtained) solution and the WKB approxima-
tion are both plotted in Fig. 1. The worst agreement is about
20%. The function (t) is not really slow-changing since

d
dt

0.5
2
for t = 0. (23)
This example shows the error of the WKB approximation
in an exaggerated way; the difference between the WKB
approximation and the exact solution would be invisible
on the graph for e.g. (t) = 5 + 2 tanh t.
The second example is (t) = 1 + 0.06 cos(2t). This func-
tion exhibits the so-called parametric resonance: the solution
x(t) grows without bound with t. However, Fig. 2 shows
that the WKB approximation completely fails to track this
growth, even though the condition (4) is well satised for
this (t).
The last example shows that the WKB approximation is
fundamentally limited in its precision. One cannot repro-
duce the parametric resonance even if one uses the more
precise ansatz (22) and computes many terms of the se-
ries (21).
2