Wave function physical meaning

A somewhat different viewpoint motivates this chapter, which stiesses the added meaning that the complex nature of the wave function lends to our understanding. Though it is only recently that this aspect has come to the forefront, the essential point was affimied already in 1972 by Wigner [5] in his famous essay on the role of mathematics in physics. We quote from this here at some length ... 

The wave function T is a function of the electron and nuclear positions. As the name implies, this is the description of an electron as a wave. This is a probabilistic description of electron behavior. As such, it can describe the probability of electrons being in certain locations, but it cannot predict exactly where electrons are located. The wave function is also called a probability amplitude because it is the square of the wave function that yields probabilities. This is the only rigorously correct meaning of a wave function. In order to obtain a physically relevant solution of the Schrodinger equation, the wave function must be continuous, single-valued, normalizable, and antisymmetric with respect to the interchange of electrons. 

In disordered materials such as amorphous silicon, the mobility is so low that it would correspond to a mean free path lower than the distance between atomic sites, which is not physically pertinent. In a classical paper, Anderson [20 has shown that disorder in a solid may result in a localization of the states, in which case the one-electron wave function takes an exponential form... 

Because of the success of the r12 method in the applications, one had almost universally in the literature adopted the idea of the necessity of introducing the interelectronic distances r j explicitly in the total wave function (see, e.g., Coulson 1938). It was there-fore essential for the development that Slater,39 Boys, and some other authors at about 1950 started emphasizing the fact that a wave function of any desired accuracy could be obtained by superposition of configurations, i.e., by summing a series of Slater determinants (Eq. 11.38) built up from a complete basic one-electron set. Numerical applications on atoms and molecules were started by means of the new modern electronic computers, and the results have been very encouraging. It is true that a wave function delivered by the machine may be the sum of a very large number of determinants, but the result may afterwards be mathematically simplified and physically interpreted by means of natural orbitals.22,17... 

It is a truism that in the past decade density functional theory has made its way from a peripheral position in quantum chemistry to center stage. Of course the often excellent accuracy of the DFT based methods has provided the primary driving force of this development. When one adds to this the computational economy of the calculations, the choice for DFT appears natural and practical. So DFT has conquered the rational minds of the quantum chemists and computational chemists, but has it also won their hearts To many, the success of DFT appeared somewhat miraculous, and maybe even unjust and unjustified. Unjust in view of the easy achievement of accuracy that was so hard to come by in the wave function based methods. And unjustified it appeared to those who doubted the soundness of the theoretical foundations. There has been misunderstanding concerning the status of the one-determinantal approach of Kohn and Sham, which superficially appeared to preclude the incorporation of correlation effects. There has been uneasiness about the molecular orbitals of the Kohn-Sham model, which chemists used qualitatively as they always have used orbitals but which in the physics literature were sometimes denoted as mathematical constructs devoid of physical (let alone chemical) meaning. 

If we multiply the probability density P(x, y, z) by the number of electrons N, then we obtain the electron density distribution or electron distribution, which is denoted by p(x, y, z), which is the probability of finding an electron in an element of volume dr. When integrated over all space, p(x, y, z) gives the total number of electrons in the system, as expected. The real importance of the concept of an electron density is clear when we consider that the wave function tp has no physical meaning and cannot be measured experimentally. This is particularly true for a system with /V electrons. The wave function of such a system is a function of 3N spatial coordinates. In other words, it is a multidimensional function and as such does not exist in real three-dimensional space. On the other hand, the electron density of any atom or molecule is a measurable function that has a clear interpretation and exists in real space. 

Since the theory under examination works exclusively on scales essentially exceeding size a of a monomeric unit, the function D(Q) has a physical meaning only at Q wave vector can be calculated via the relationship... 

Space integrals of expressions quadratic in the wave function are interpreted as expectation values of the corresponding physical quantities. This interpretation suggests that (47) should be interpreted as the expectation value of the photon energy, which would mean that... 

As required by (36), the variational parameter k is calculated to vary between k = 2 at R = 0 and k = 1 at R > 5ao- The parameter k is routinely interpreted as either a screening constant or an effective nuclear charge, as if it had real physical meaning. In fact, it is no more than a mathematical artefact, deliberately introduced to remedy the inadequacy of hydrogenic wave functions as descriptors of electrons in molecular environments. No such parameter occurs within the Burrau [84] scheme. 

There is, of course, a whole range of computed mean values of physical quantities which, for the exact wave function, should be equal to the corresponding observed... 

In further studies of chemistry and physics, you will learn that the wave functions that are solutions to the Schrodinger equation have no direct, physical meaning. They are mathematical ideas. However, the square of a wave function does have a physical meaning. It is a quantity that describes the probability that an electron is at a particular point within the atom at a particular time. The square of each wave function (orbital) can be used to plot three-dimensional probability distribution graphs for that orbital. These plots help chemists visualize the space in which electrons are most likely to be found around atoms. These plots are... 

One of the purposes of this work is to make contact between relativistic corrections in quantum mechanics and the weakly relativistic limit of QED for this problem. In particular, we will check how performing plane-wave expectation values of the Breit hamiltonian in the Pauli approximation (only terms depending on c in atomic units) we obtain the proper semi-relativistic functional consistent in order ppl mc ), with the possibility of analyzing the separate contributions of terms with different physical meaning. Also the role of these terms compared to next order ones will be studied. 

The coefficient of (1 / /2) is simply a normalization factor. This expression builds in a physical description of electron exchange implicitly it changes sign if two electrons are exchanged. This expression has other advantages. For example, it does not distinguish between electrons and it disappears if two electrons have the same coordinates or if two of the one-electron wave functions are the same. This means that the Slater determinant satisfies... 

To give physical meaning to the principal dielectric functions, we consider propagation of plane waves E0exp(/k x — ioot) in an anisotropic medium that is, we ask What kind of plane waves can propagate in such a medium without change of polarization If we follow the same reasoning as in Section 2.6, we obtain from the Maxwell equations... 

It has been assumed, necessarily, that the reader has some prior familiarity with the basic notions of quantum theory. He is expected to know in a general way what the wave equation is, the significance of the Hamiltonian operator, the physical meaning of a wave function, and so forth, but no detailed knowledge of mathematical intricacies is presumed. Even the contents of a rather qualitative book such as Coulson s Valence should be sufficient, although, of course, further background knowledge will not be amiss. 

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