next up previous contents
Next: Location of the packets Up: General Features of Scattering Previous: Physical interpretation of the

Wave packets

As in the free particle case, the time dependent wave packet solution to the TDSE is the general superposition of pure energy states with the appropriate time-dependent phase factors,

  eqnarray397

where the factor tex2html_wrap_inline1845 is just for normalization so that, as we show in the next paragraph, tex2html_wrap_inline1563 is normalized so long as is tex2html_wrap_inline1567 . Also, we again regard tex2html_wrap_inline1559 as sharply peaked near some value of incoming momentum, tex2html_wrap_inline1561 .

There are three terms in this expression, associated with either the source, the reflected or the transmitted packet. Each is an integral of the form we analyzed in free space in Section 2. Explicitly, the three terms are

    eqnarray424

The complete scattering solution may be reassembled from these integrals,

  equation446



Prof. Tomas Alberto Arias
Thu May 29 15:19:37 EDT 1997