Numerical solution of the 3D time dependent Schrödinger equation in spherical coordinates: Spectral basis and effects of split-operator technique

We study a numerical solution of the multi-dimensional time dependent Schrödinger equation using a split-operator technique for time stepping and a spectral approximation in the spatial coordinates. We are particularly interested in systems with near spherical symmetries. One expects these problems to be most efficiently computed in spherical coordinates as a coarse grain discretization should be sufficient in the angular directions. However, in this coordinate system the standard Fourier basis does not provide a good basis set in the radial direction. Here, we suggest an alternative basis set based on Chebyshev polynomials and a variable transformation.