The Schrodinger equation168; UCLA Department （薛定谔equation168;）.pdf

¨ THE SCHRODINGER EQUATION TERENCE TAO ¨ 1. The Schrodinger equation In mathematical physics, the Schr¨odinger equation (and the closely related Heisen- berg equation) are the most fundamental equations in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, playing the same role as Hamilton’s laws of motion (and the closely related Poisson equation) in non-relativistic classical mechanics. (In relativistic quantum mechanics, it is the equations of quantum field theory which replace the role of Heisenberg’s equation, while Schr¨odinger’s equation does not directly have a natural analogue.) In pure mathematics, the Schr¨odinger equation and its variants is one of the basic equations studied in the field of partial differential equations, and has applications to geometry, to spectral and scattering theory, and to integrable systems. There are actually two (closely related) variants of Schr¨odinger’s equation, the time dependent Schr¨odinger equation and the time independent Schr¨odinger equation; we will begin with the discussion of the time-dependent equation. Let us begin with the physical motivation, reviewing both the classical and quantum mechanics of a simple physical system. While the Schr¨odinger equation can be used to describe the quantum dynamics of many-particle systems under the influence of a variety of forces, let us for simplicity just consider a single particle with some mass m 0 in n-dimensional space Rn moving subject to the influence of a potential, which for us will be a function V : Rn → R. To avoid technicalities we shall assume implicitly that all functions in this discussion are smooth (i.e. infinitely differentiable). In classical me