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What is the physical meaning of multiplication of two wavefunctions?

Physics Asked by user14812745 on April 27, 2021

In the amount of quantum mechanics I’vs learnt I understand what wave functions are, how do we extract information from them and so on, and that addition of two wavefunctions on renormalization gives a superposition of the corresponding quantum states.

I was learning the completeness of hermitian operators when I came up with the question as to what does the multiplication of 2 wavefunctions mean physically, if anything at all??

Please note while answering that I still don’t completely understand what completeness really means and what is it’s significance is although our professor did tell us it will be really useful later .

The equations are as follows :

$int(phi_{i}^*) (phi_j) dx= delta_{ij}$

$delta_{ij}=1$ for i=j , $0$ otherwise

2 Answers

It doesn't really mean anything physically (as far as I know.) Rather, it's a mathematical trick that allows us to explicitly figure out how to write any wavefunction $psi$ as a superposition of some set of eigenstates $phi_n$.

Specifically, the property of completeness says that any wavefunction $psi$ can be written as some superposition of the eigenstates: $$ psi = sum_j a_j phi_j $$ for some set of complex coefficients $a_j$. The orthogonality property is then $$ int phi_i^* phi_j , dx = delta_{ij} $$ (note the complex conjugate, though if the wavefunctions are real you can ignore it.)

These two properties allow us to extract the coefficients $a_i$ for an arbitrary wavefunction $psi$, as follows: begin{align*} int phi_i^* psi , dx &=int phi_i^* left[ sum_j a_j phi_j right] , dx &= sum_j a_j left[ int phi_i^* phi_j , dx right] &= sum_j a_j delta_{ij} &= a_i. end{align*} So if you tell me that the wavefunction at some time is $psi$, then I can figure out exactly what superposition of the eigenfunctions it is by doing a bunch of integrals. Knowing the coefficients $a_i$ then allows me to figure out the probabilities and expectation values of measurements, or (if the eigenstates are energy eigenstates) to use the time-independent Schrödinger equation to find how the state $psi$ evolves in time.

Correct answer by Michael Seifert on April 27, 2021

It looks like you're using asterisks for multiplication, which is not a good idea when writing equations for other humans. In this context, it also creates confusion because it looks like the notation $z^*$ (with a superscripted asterisk) for the complex conjugate of a complex number. In fact, that's particularly relevant here because your equation as written is incorrect. One of the $phi$'s has to have its complex conjugate taken.

The integral $int phi_i^* phi_j dx$ is called the inner product of the two wavefunctions. It has the interpretation that it measures how similar they are in terms of overlap. For example, if one of the wavefunctions is the wavefunction of an electron that's totally localized within an atom in my house, and another one is for an electron that's totally localized within an atom on the moon, then this integral will be zero because there's no overlap. This tells us that the two states are completely different, and they can be 100% distinguished in a one-shot measurement.

As a geometrical analogy, this is all closely analogous to the vector dot product.

Answered by user285844 on April 27, 2021

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