Saturday, September 19, 2015

quantum mechanics - Atomic orbitals and complex wavefunction


I have read different questions related to the atomic orbitals labelled with 2px and 2py present here, such as What is the difference between real orbital & complex orbital? or Notation of complex valued atomic orbitals, but I've not found a complete clarification.


If px and py orbitals are a superposition of two state with definite m, which implies that the electron is partially in the m=+1 state and partially in the m=1, why it's not so difficult to find books or slides where the px is identified with the quantum number m=1 and the py as m=1 like in the image?


enter image description here


It seems that the wavefunction and its modulus squared says something that is similar to this:


enter image description here



So, where is the truth? Why do we need a superposition for the px and py orbitals that doesn't comes out from spherical harmonics, and not for the pz?


I'm referring to the hydrogen wave functions:


Ψn,l,m(r,θ,ϕ)=Nernr1Rln(r)Pml(cosθ)eimϕ.




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