The Kustaanheino-Stiefel transformation is used to transform the Coulomb problem to a four-dimensional isotropic harmonic oscillator with a constraint. Ordinary coherent states are introduced over this oscillator and are shown to evolve in a fictitious time. When projected back into the physical space, the states follow the classical Kepler orbits in physical time. The resulting quasiclassical picture is obtained without the Bohr correspondence principle of taking only contributions from high principal quantum numbers.

• Received 17 June 1985

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.33.6