Sunday, January 28, 2018

quantum mechanics - Expectation values of x, y, z in hydrogen?


The expectation value of r=x2+y2+z2 for the electron in the ground state in hydrogen is 3a2 where a is the bohr radius.


I can easily see from the integration that the expectation values of x , y, z individually is 0 because of the factor cosϕ, sinϕ and cosθ(.sinθ) respectively for x y, z integrating out to 0.


What does this mean? Is it an artifact of the spherically symmetric potential? Since r has a non zero value but what makes up r ie x, y, z (or rather the squareroot of the sum of their squares) each has individually 0 and i can simultaneously determine their values since they commute with each other, which means x,y,z are all simultaneously 0 and r is not?!




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