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The Schrödinger equation is a partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a non-relativistic quantum-mechanical system. [ 1 ] : 1–2 Its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of quantum mechanics .
The wave function of an initially very localized free particle. In quantum physics, a wave function (or wavefunction) is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. The most common symbols for a wave function are the Greek letters ψ and Ψ (lower-case and capital psi, respectively). Wave functions are complex ...
In the Schrödinger picture, the wave function or field is the solution to the Schrödinger equation; = ^ one of the postulates of quantum mechanics. All relativistic wave equations can be constructed by specifying various forms of the Hamiltonian operator Ĥ describing the quantum system .
Schrödinger's equation, in bra–ket notation, is | = ^ | where ^ is the Hamiltonian operator.. The Hamiltonian operator can be written ^ = ^ + (^) where (^) is the potential energy, m is the mass and we have assumed for simplicity that there is only one spatial dimension q.
The time evolution of the state is given by a differentiable function from the real numbers R, representing instants of time, to the Hilbert space of system states. This map is characterized by a differential equation as follows: If |ψ(t) denotes the state of the system at any one time t, the following Schrödinger equation holds:
Time evolution is generated by the Hamiltonian, yielding the Schrödinger equation | = ^ | . However, in quantum field theory , the coordinate is the field operator ϕ ^ x = ϕ ^ ( x ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\phi }}_{\mathbf {x} }={\hat {\phi }}(\mathbf {x} )} , which acts on the state's wave functional as
The Schrödinger equation describes the space- and time-dependence of the slow changing (non-relativistic) wave function of a quantum system. The solution of the Schrödinger equation for a bound system is discrete (a set of permitted states, each characterized by an energy level ) which results in the concept of quanta .
The simplest approach is to focus on the description in terms of plane matter waves for a free particle, that is a wave function described by =, where is a position in real space, is the wave vector in units of inverse meters, ω is the angular frequency with units of inverse time and is time.