Timeline for Does a wave function describe the motion of electrons or atoms?
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| Jul 17, 2016 at 21:27 | comment | added | garyp | Your mention of temperature implies that the atom in question has other atoms nearby, and interacts with them. That's a different problem. An ensemble of atoms will have collisions, and as atoms approach each other in collisions their wavefunctions and energy levels change. The continual change in speed of the atom means that it sees the radiation field Doppler shifted in complicated ways. The analysis in this thread is about isolated atoms. For more complicated systems, approximations such as the B-O approx must be used. The relative motion is steady only for isolated atoms. | |
| Jul 16, 2016 at 18:25 | comment | added | user1285419 | Thanks for your reply. I am more or less understand the statement. However, it is quite misleading in the text why they assume the nucleus is fixed in space. Even in the extreme low temperature the atom should move, so does nucleus. But I understand that since the nucleus is heavier than electron, so should I say even the atom is moving, the relative motion between the nucleus to the electron is steady? | |
| Jul 16, 2016 at 11:23 | history | answered | garyp | CC BY-SA 3.0 |