Wednesday, April 1, 2015

quantum mechanics - Probability of energy from wavefunction


In general, given a wavefunction ψ(x)x|ψ for some system, how can one compute the probability that the system will be at a given energy level En? That is, how can one compute En|ψ? I feel like this should be next to trivial, but the wavefunction is an expansion in the position basis and I would need the energy eigenbasis to perform the computation. Thus this reduces to a change of basis, but how is this done?


Note: In this system I have already solved the TISE and found the energy spectum.



Answer



The energy eigenstates can be expressed in the form of wavefunctions as well, e.g. ψn(x)x|En. Then, you can compute the inner product of the two wavefunctions by integrating their product: En|ψ=En|xx|ψdx=ψn(x)ψ(x)dx


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