The Sc hr 172;o ding er W av e Equati on （Sc hr 172;阿丁er W av e,）.pdf

Chapter 6 The Schro¨dinger Wave Equation So far, we have made a lot of progress concerning the properties of, and interpretation of the wave function, but as yet we have had very little to say about how the wave function may be derived in a general situation, that is to say, we do not have on hand a ‘wave equation’ for the wave function. There is no true derivation of this equation, but its form can be motivated by physical and mathematical arguments at a wide variety of levels of sophistication. Here, we will offer a simple derivation based on what we have learned so far about the wave function. The Schr¨odinger equation has two ‘forms’, one in which time explicitly appears, and so describes how the wave function of a particle will evolve in time. In general, the wave function behaves like a wave, and so the equation is often referred to as the time dependent Schrodin¨ ger wave equation. The other is the equation in which the time dependence has been ‘removed’ and hence is known as the time independent Schrodin¨ ger equation and is found to describe, amongst other things, what the allowed energies are of the particle. These are not two separate, independent equations – the time independent equation can be derived readily from the time dependent equation (except if the potential is time dependent, a development we will not be discussing here). In the following we will describe how the first, time dependent equation can be ‘derived’, and in then how the second follows from the first. 6.1 Derivation of the Schr¨odinger Wave Equation 6.1.1 The Time Dependent Schr¨odinger Wave Equation In the discussion of the particle in an infinite potential well, it was observed that the wave function of a particle of fixed energy E could most naturally be written as a linear combination of wa