Momentum Eigenstates

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This Demonstration shows the motions of nonrelativistic one-dimensional momentum eigenfunctions. The time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a free particle in one dimension is given by . The eigenfunctions are
, with a continuum of momentum eigenvalues
,
and energy eigenvalues
. The energy eigenvalues are two-fold degenerate except for
. The degeneracy corresponds to left-to-right motion when
and right-to-left motion when
.
Contributed by: S. M. Blinder (February 2012)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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Reference
[1] S. M. Blinder, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004 pp. 31–32.
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