1. Completeness of Energy Eigenfunctions for the Reflectionless Potential in Quantum Mechanics
- Author
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Erman, F. and Turgut, O. T.
- Subjects
Quantum Physics ,Mathematical Physics - Abstract
There are few exactly solvable potentials in quantum mechanics for which the completeness relation of the energy eigenstates can be explicitly verified. In this article, we give an elementary proof that the set of bound (discrete) states together with the scattering (continuum) states of the reflectionless potential form a complete set. We also review a direct and elegant derivation of the energy eigenstates with proper normalization by introducing an analog of the creation and annihilation operators of the harmonic oscillator problem. We further show that, in the case of a single bound state, the corresponding wave function can be found from the knowledge of continuum eigenstates of the system. Finally, completeness is shown by using the even/odd parity eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, which provides another explicit demonstration of a fundamental property of quantum mechanical Hamiltonians., Comment: This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in American Journalof Physics 92, 950-956 (2024), and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0228452. This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) License
- Published
- 2024
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