Quantum-mechanical energy eigenstates and their superpositions

S. Balasubramanian

A generalization to the Hellmann–Feynman theorem is presented when the quantum mechanical state is a linear superposition of energy eigenstates. Some simple applications are discussed.

pLalitha Nathp

Boris V. Fine

This work describes the statistics for the occupation numbers of quantum levels in a large isolated quantum system, where all possible superpositions of eigenstates are allowed provided all these superpositions have the same fixed energy. Such a condition is not equivalent to the conventional microcanonical condition because the latter limits the participating eigenstates to a very narrow energy window. The statistics is obtained analytically for both the entire system and its small subsystem. In a significant departure from the Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics, the average occupation numbers of quantum states exhibit in the present case weak algebraic dependence on energy. In the macroscopic limit, this dependence is routinely accompanied by the condensation into the lowest-energy quantum state. This work contains initial numerical tests of the above statistics for finite systems and also reports the following numerical finding: when the basis states of large but finite random matrix Hamiltonians are expanded in terms of eigenstates, the participation of eigenstates in such an expansion obeys the newly obtained statistics. The above statistics might be observable in small quantum systems, but for the macroscopic systems, it rather re-enforces doubts about self-sufficiency of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics for justifying the Boltzmann-Gibbs equilibrium.

We show that zero-energy flows appear in many particle systems as same as in single particle cases in 2-dimensions. Vortex patterns constructed from the zeroenergy flows can be investigated in terms of the eigenstates in conjugate spaces of Gel’fand triplets. Stable patterns are written by the superposition of zero-energy eigenstates. On the other hand vortex creations and annihilations are described by the insertions of unstable eigenstates with complex-energy eigenvalues into the stable patterns. Some concrete examples are presented in the 2-dimensional parabolic potential barrier case. We point out three interesting properties of the zero-energy flows; (i) the absolute economy as for the energy consumption, (ii) the infinite variety of the vortex patterns, and (iii) the absolute stability of the vortex patterns Keywords: Zero-energy solutions, vortex creations and annihilations, quantum mechanics, Gel’fand triplets,

Peter J. Riggs