Lecture

Harmonic Oscillator: Energy States

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In course

PHYS-203: Computational physics I

Aborder, formuler et résoudre des problèmes de physique en utilisant des méthodes numériques simples. Comprendre les avantages et les limites de ces méthodes (stabilité, convergence). Illustrer différents sujets de physique traités dans d'autres cours. ...

Description

This lecture covers topics such as boundary conditions, the Crank-Nicolson scheme, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Fourier transforms, the harmonic oscillator, semi-classical states, potential barriers, resonances, and stationary Schrödinger equation. It also discusses the probabilistic interpretation, energy conservation, free particles, wave packet spread, and the effects of dispersion. Demonstrations and formal mathematical proofs are presented, emphasizing the importance of harmonic oscillators and energy states in quantum physics.

Instructor

Laurent Villard

Teaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students Matteo Maccio, Olivier Fischer, Gloria Luisa Falchetto, Paolo Angelino, Sébastien Jolliet, Xavier Lapillonne, Thibaut Vernay, Julien Stanislas Pierre Dominski, Gabriele Merlo, Emmanuel Lanti, Noé Ohana, Moahan Murugappan

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Quantum mechanics: Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics

Related concepts (32)

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science. Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales.

Free particle

In physics, a free particle is a particle that, in some sense, is not bound by an external force, or equivalently not in a region where its potential energy varies. In classical physics, this means the particle is present in a "field-free" space. In quantum mechanics, it means the particle is in a region of uniform potential, usually set to zero in the region of interest since the potential can be arbitrarily set to zero at any point in space. The classical free particle is characterized by a fixed velocity v.

Solution of Schrödinger equation for a step potential

In quantum mechanics and scattering theory, the one-dimensional step potential is an idealized system used to model incident, reflected and transmitted matter waves. The problem consists of solving the time-independent Schrödinger equation for a particle with a step-like potential in one dimension. Typically, the potential is modeled as a Heaviside step function. The time-independent Schrödinger equation for the wave function is where Ĥ is the Hamiltonian, ħ is the reduced Planck constant, m is the mass, E the energy of the particle.

Schrödinger equation

The Schrödinger equation is a linear partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a quantum-mechanical system. Its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of quantum mechanics. The equation is named after Erwin Schrödinger, who postulated the equation in 1925 and published it in 1926, forming the basis for the work that resulted in his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. Conceptually, the Schrödinger equation is the quantum counterpart of Newton's second law in classical mechanics.

Rectangular potential barrier

In quantum mechanics, the rectangular (or, at times, square) potential barrier is a standard one-dimensional problem that demonstrates the phenomena of wave-mechanical tunneling (also called "quantum tunneling") and wave-mechanical reflection. The problem consists of solving the one-dimensional time-independent Schrödinger equation for a particle encountering a rectangular potential energy barrier. It is usually assumed, as here, that a free particle impinges on the barrier from the left.

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