# Tag Info

5

But how can we guarantee that two solutions $\boldsymbol {\psi_1}$ and $\boldsymbol {\psi_2}$ to the time-dependent equation don't have $\boldsymbol {\psi_1(x,0)} = \boldsymbol {\psi_2(x,0)}$. If we can't guarantee this, then how do we know that the solution found by Griffith's method is unique? I interpret that your question basically asks how do we ...

4

The definition of the expectation value of an operator A is $$\langle A\rangle=\int{\psi^* (x) A(x) \psi (x) dx}$$ (because it represents "the value of the variable" $A(x)$ times "the probability of being in that configuration" $P(x)=\psi^* (x) \psi (x)$) and for the particular case of the expectation value of the position ...

3

The form of the solution shown by Griffiths is not unique. That means that there exist cases where a basis $\{\psi_n(x)\}$ will reproduce $\Psi$ as $$\Psi(x,t)=\sum_{n=1}^\infty c_n\psi_n(x) e^{-iE_nt/\hbar},$$ but there exists a second, different basis $\{\varphi_n(x)\}$ which (with different coefficients) also reconstructs $\Psi$:  ...

2

You are imagining the particle in the well as a classical system i.e. a point particle moving to and fro in the well. However this is not a good description of the system. A quantum particle does not have a position. By this I mean that it is meaningless to ask what the position of the particle is because position, in the sense we normally use the term, is ...

1

Let's look at where the electromagnetic interaction comes from in hydrogen. At first quantization you have a multiparticle system so the wavefunction is defined as $\psi=\psi(x_1,y_1,z_1,x_2,y_2,z_2,t)$ and the point is to write the Hamiltonian. And the Hamiltonian comes from the Lagrangian. For a single particle of charge $q$ in an external ...

1

this is a description of an interaction between the electron and photons, which would collapse the wavefunction (right?). No this isn't right. As long as the system stays isolated, the interaction simply means that there are cross terms in the relevant Hamiltonian and that you have a two-particle quantum system, whose state space is the tensor product ...

Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible