On the quantum-mechanical singular harmonic oscillator

Francisco M. Fernández

Published 2021-12-05, updated 2023-05-12Version 2

We obtain the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the singular harmonic oscillator $V(x)=\alpha/(2x^2)+x^2/2$ by means of the simple and straightforward Frobenius (power-series) method. From the behaviour of the eigenfunctions at origin we derive two branches for the eigenvalues for negative values of $\alpha$. We discuss the well known fact that there are square-integrable solutions only for some allowed discrete values of the energy.