Free particle

In physics, a free particle is a particle that, in some sense, is not bound. In classical physics, this
means the particle is present in a "field-free" space.

Classical Free Particle

The classical free particle is characterized simply by a fixed velocity. The momentum is given by

and the energy by

where m is the mass of the particle and v is the vector velocity of the particle.

The travelling harmonic waves which have a constant magnitude at great distances and for which
the normalisation integral diverges, represents Free Particles.

Non-Relativistic Quantum Free Particle

The Schrödinger equation for a free particle is:

The solution for a particular momentum is given by a plane wave:

with the constraint

where r is the position vector, t is time, k is the wave vector, and ω is the angular frequency.
Since the integral of ψψ* over all space must be unity, the wave function must first be
normalized. This is a problem for general free particles, but is not a problem for a slightly non-
free particle that is somewhat localized in momentum and position. (See particle in a box for a
further discussion.)
The expectation value of the momentum p is

The expectation value of the energy E is

Solving for k and ω and substituting into the constraint equation yields the familiar relationship
between energy and momentum for non-relativistic massive particles

where p=|p|. The group velocity of the wave is defined as

where v is the classical velocity of the particle. The phase velocity of the wave is defined as

A general free particle need not have a specific momentum or energy. In this case, the free
particle wavefunction may be represented by a superposition of free particle momentum
eigenfunctions:

where the integral is over all k-space.

Relativistic free particle

There are a number of equations describing relativistic particles. For a description of the free
particle solutions, see the individual articles.

• The Klein-Gordon equation describes charge-neutral, spinless, relativistic quantum

particles

• The Dirac equation describes the relativistic electron (charged, spin 1/2)