Degenerate Eigenstates

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In quantum mechanics, if any eigenstate is -fold degenerate, there are an infinite number of choices for the
orthogonal eigenfunctions. The simplest possible example is the free particle in one dimension. Every energy level
is twofold degenerate. This corresponds to the physical fact that particles moving in opposite directions have the same kinetic energy. The Schrödinger equation
has two linearly independent eigenfunctions. A common choice takes
. These functions are delta function-normalized, such that
, and are also eigenfunctions of linear momentum
, with the eigenvalues
.
Contributed by: S. M. Blinder (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
Snapshots 1 and 2: varying values of
Snapshot 3: for , the eigenfunctions are proportional to
and
Reference: S. M. Blinder, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004 pp. 31–32.
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