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American Journal of Physics

The variational principle and simple properties of the ground-state wave function

Jordi Mur-Petit, A. Polls, Ferran Mazzanti

Published Jul 12, 2002• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The variational principle is used to show that the ground-state wave function of a one-body Schrödinger equation with a real potential is real, does not change sign, and is nondegenerate. As a consequence, if the Hamiltonian is invariant under rotations and parity transformations, the ground state must have positive parity and zero angular momentum.

DOI
10.1119/1.1479742

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The variational principle is used to show that the ground-state wave function of a one-body Schrödinger equation with a real potential is real, does not change sign, and is nondegenerate. As a consequence, if the Hamiltonian is invariant under rotations and parity transformations, the ground state must have positive parity and zero angular momentum.
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The asymptotic properties of a Schrödinger wave function which represents the bound ground state of a system of three interacting particles are examined. It is assumed that the interaction can be described by a static potential which is the sum of three two-body potentials and one three-body potential, where the potentials have the property that if any one of the particles is separated from the other two by a distance which tends to infinity, then the part of the potential energy which depends on the position of that particle tends to zero. The problem is treated nonrelativistically. Decreasing exponential bounds on the ground-state three-body wave function are established in configuration space. It is shown that these bounds depend only on the masses of the three particles, on the ground-state energy of the three-body system, and on the lower bounds on the spectra of the Hamiltonians for the three two-body systems arising when one of the three particles is removed and the remaining two interact through the corresponding two-body potential. It is furthermore shown that the three-body wave function in momentum space admits of analytic continuation into a tube-region in complex momentum space, which tube-region is the product of real momentum space and a convex bounded region in imaginary momentum space. The tube-region is explicitly determined. The implications of the results for the theory of the vertex function in quantum field theory are discussed. The relevancy of the results obtained in this paper to the variational computation of energy levels and wave functions of three-body systems is also briefly discussed. In the course of the derivation some generalizations are pointed out; in particular, the final results remain valid for a class of more general interactions, which cannot be described by static potentials. Likewise, the results remain valid for a class of spin-dependent interactions.
Abstract In this chapter we consider the time-independent Schrödinger equation for three spatial dimensions. Making use of the orbital angular momentum observables, including the Laplacian in spherical polar coordinates, and introducing an effective potential, we recast the three-dimensional Schrödinger as a one-dimensional differential equation for the reduced radial wave function. In this context we discuss conditions for the existence of bound states and an upper bound on the ground-state energy obtained from the Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle. As an example we then consider the bound-state solutions for the spherical potential well and discuss the conditions for it admitting a ground state. We then turn to the Coulomb potential representing the hydrogen atom and discuss methods for obtaining upper and lower bounds on the ground-state energy to explain the stability of matter. Finally, obtain the Laguerre-polynomial solutions of the radial Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom, determine their energies and discuss their properties
The Hamiltonian of a system containing decaying states is subjected to a nonunitary similarity transformation which introduces the wave functions of these decaying states as well as those of the "antidecaying" dual states explicitly into the representation. The dependence of the Green's-function pole on these wave functions is used to formulate a variational principle for their determination, yielding a non-Hermitian, nonlinear wave equation including self-energy contributions. Explicit solutions are given in a simple example.