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Boundary conditions and the Dirac spinor

Vidal Alonso Secades, Salvatore De Vincenzo, Luigi Mondino

Published Jan 1, 2001• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

A relativistic “free” particle in a one-dimensional box is studied. The impossibility of the wavefunction vanishing completely at the walls of the box is proven. Various physically acceptable boundary conditions that allow non-trivial solutions for this problem are proposed. The non-relativistic limits of these results are obtained.

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Abstract The problem of a particle in a box is probably the simplest problem in quantum mechanics which allows for significant insight into the nature of quantum systems and thus is a cornerstone in the teaching of quantum mechanics. In relativistic quantum mechanics this problem allows also to highlight the implications of special relativity for quantum physics, namely the effect that spin has on the quantised energy spectra. To illustrate this point, we solve the problem of a spin zero relativistic particle in a one- and three-dimensional box using the Klein–Gordon equation in the Feshbach–Villars formalism. We compare the solutions and the energy spectra obtained with the corresponding ones from the Dirac equation for a spin one-half relativistic particle. We note the similarities and differences, in particular the spin effects in the relativistic energy spectrum. As expected, the non-relativistic limit is the same for both kinds of particles, since, for a particle in a box, the spin contribution to the energy is a relativistic effect.
We show that the first order form of the Schrodinger equation proposed in [1] can be obtained from the Dirac equation in the non-relativistic limit. We also show that the Pauli Hamiltonian is obtained from this equation by requiring local gauge invariance. In addition, we study the problem of a spin up particle incident on a finite potential barrier and show that the known quantum mechanical results are obtained. Finally, we consider the symmetric potential well and show that the quantum mechanical expression for the quantized energy levels of a particle is obtained with periodic boundary conditions. Based on these conclusions, we propose that the equation introduced in [1] is the non-relativistic limit of the Dirac equation and more appropriately describes spin 1/2 particles in the non-relativistic limit.
A proposal is given, of how to implement point interactions and boundary conditions in the path integral. The starting point is a path-integral formulation of a Dirac particle in one dimension. The implementation of a point interaction yields, by means of a perturbation expansion, the corresponding Green function for a relativistic particle. In the non-relativistic limit several cases can be distinguished depending on which of the four possibilities of the point interaction has been chosen. By a proper combination of the various possibilities of implementing the point interaction, the whole range of the four-parameter family of boundary conditions for point interactions can be exploited, in the relativistic case as well as in the non-relativistic limit. In addition, making the strength of the point interaction infinitely repulsive yields boundary conditions at finite points on the real line. In particular, Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions emerge. The method is illustrated with some examples.
One-dimensional particle states are constructed according to orthogonality conditions, without requiring boundary conditions. Free particle states are constructed using Dirac's delta function orthogonality conditions. The states (doublets) depend on two quantum numbers: energy and parity. With the aid of projection operators the particles are confined to a constrained region, in a way similar to the action of an infinite well potential. From the resulting overcomplete basis only the mutually orthogonal states are selected. Four solutions are found, corresponding to different non-commuting Hamiltonians. Their energy eigenstates are labeled with the main quantum number n and parity "+" or "-". The energy eigenvalues are functions of n only. The four cases correspond to different boundary conditions: (I) the wave function vanishes on the boundary, (II) the derivative of the wavefunction vanishes on the boundary,(III) periodic (symmetric) boundary conditions, (IV) periodic (antisymmetric)boundary conditions . Among the four cases, only solution (III) forms a complete basis in the sense that any function in the constrained region, can be expanded with it. By extending the boundaries of the constrained region to infinity, only solution (III) converges uniformly to the free particle states. Orthogonality seems to be a more basic requirement than boundary conditions. By using projection operators, confinement of the particle to a definite region can be achieved in a conceptually simple and unambiguous way, and physical operators can be written so that they act only in the confined region.
Abstract We consider a non-relativistic particle in a one-dimensional box with all possible quantum boundary conditions that make the kinetic-energy operator self-adjoint. We determine the Wigner functions of the corresponding eigenfunctions and analyze in detail their classical limit, governed by their behavior in the high-energy regime. We show that the quantum boundary conditions split into two classes: all local and regular boundary conditions collapse to the same classical boundary condition, while a dependence on singular non-local boundary conditions persists in the classical limit.