Thursday, April 14, 2016

quantum mechanics - Why are eigenfunctions which correspond to discrete/continuous eigenvalue spectra guaranteed to be normalizable/non-normalizable?


These facts are taken for granted in a QM text I read. The purportedly guaranteed non-normalizability of eigenfunctions which correspond to a continuous eigenvalue spectrum is only partly justified by the author, who merely states that the non-normalizability is linked to the fact that such eigenfunctions do not tend to zero at infinity.


Not a very satisfying answer. What I'm really after is an explanation based in functional analysis. I believe there is a generalized result about inner products being finite for discrete spectra but infinite for continuous spectra.


Can anyone shed some light on this?




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