Saturday, April 28, 2018

quantum mechanics - Open problem? Square of the wave function Psi(x)xo=delta(xx0) of a particle localized at a point x0?


Does anybody know the status of the problem to define the wave function (non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics) of a particle localized at a definite point?


Landau-Lifshitz says in chapter 1 that this function is Ψ(x)xo=δ(xx0) and gives an explanation that it produces the correct probability density when it is used to span some other arbitrary wave function Ψ(x). The problem is of course that the wave function given above squares to a non integrable function. As far as I know this problem is unsolved. My question is if anybody knows the status quo of this problem. I am sorry if this question may be duplicated, I could not find it amongst the answered questions.



Answer



Mathematically spoken, since you want your wave functions to be square integrable, your wave functions must be in L2 or some subspace thereof. However, you won't find a function in this space that has a support on a countable set of points, since the Lebesgue integral cannot see countable sets (measure 0), hence there cannot be a function (i.e. no wave function) with support in a single point (incidentally, the delta function is not a "function" in a way for that reason).


This tells us that a wavefunction for a particle that is fully localized cannot be defined in the usual setting of square Lebesgue-integrable functions, which is not too tragic, because we don't really think it makes physical sense anyway.


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