Generalpotentials-KSUPhysicsEducationResearchGroup.docVIP

General potentials Introduction Most of the quantum mechanics problems that you encounter in you career will probably not involve piecewise constant potentials. Real world potentials have smooth curved shapes. But that doesn’t make what you’ve learned about piecewise constant potentials any less worthwhile. There are several ways that your study of piecewise constant potentials will help you in your study of more general potentials. Most of the techniques and ideas that you have learned about in the last six in-gagements will apply in some way to more general potentials. All of the phenomena that you saw with piecewise constant potentials exist (and are important) in the study of general potentials. The three basic types of problems that you learned about (scattering, half scattering, and bound states) still apply and have the same properties in general potentials. The wave functions for general potentials will have the same types of shapes and behaviors as those of piecewise constant potentials. And there are many approximation and computation techniques for general potentials that are based in some way on piecewise constant potentials. What you have learn from piecewise constant potentials Since piecewise constant potentials are such a rich source of information that applies to more general potentials we will begin our study of general potentials by reviewing what you have seen so far. You started your study of piecewise constant potentials by looking at the one-dimensional time dependent Schr?dinger equation. You used separation of variables to simplify the problem and derive the one-dimensional time independent Schr?dinger equation. Solving this second order differential equation is the main method we have for finding the wave function for a given potential – even when that potential is not constant or piecewise constant. You saw two main types of solutions to this equation based on whether the quanta was in a region that was classically allowed or clas