Coherent states for the Morse oscillator are constructed using generalized coherent states associated with the SO(2,1) noninvariance group for this potential. By using the path integral over these states, it is shown that the Morse oscillator may be viewed as a harmonic oscillator evolving in a fictitious time. To show that this picture is mathematically consistent, we compute the path integral for the Green’s function and recover the bound-state spectrum.

• Received 23 August 1985

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.33.2207