Problem Set 1

Note: This problem set is meant to test your knowledge in basic quantum mechanics, relativity and algebra at the undergraduate level; and is due September 10 by midnight. Please
return directly to me in my office Rutherford 321. If Im not there slip your assignment
below my door.
1. An electron in spin state | + zi is trapped in an eigenstate with a spatial wavefunction
2

(r, , ) = Aer P1 (), where A is the normalization constant. If suddenly all the
electromagnetic interactions in our universe die off i.e become a constant, how will the
electron in the given state behave with time? Give quantitative details.
2. A free particle of mass m can have any continuous momenta k. Imagine for simplicity
we take our spacetime to be 1 + 1 dimensional and put a sharp cutoff on the momenta. By
this I mean that we only allow the particle to have momenta k kx ; and particles of
momenta kx > do not exist. Find the wavefunction of the particle if I try to detect it
at a point x = x0 .
3. A particle is constrained to move on a one dimensional line that passes through the
center of a ring of radius R. The plane of the ring is perpendicular to the line. The particle
has a mass m and charge q. At time t = 0 the particle is detected at the center of the
ring. At that instant the ring separates into two rings of charges +Q and Q respectively
such that the planes of the rings are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the line
on which we have the massive charged particle. If the rings separate by distances a on
both sides of the particle, determine the probability of finding the particle at that point
at a later time t1 > 0. Discuss the approximations used in solving the system and ignore
any dynamics of the rings.
4. An electron in a hydrogen atom is in some state with an angular momentum l. Imagine
that the state of the electron is such that it has the maximum z component of the angular
momentum, i.e m = l. Show that even in that state the electron has non-zero values of the
x and y directional angular momenta. Give a reason for this, and verify that the additional
contribution to L2 from these momenta is precisely lh2 .
Imagine now that I have two hydrogen atom like systems that do not interact with each
other. Lets call them system 1 and system 2. System 1 is specified by a charge e1 , angular
momentum l1 and energy E1 , i.e by the triplet (e1 , l1 , E1 ) where of course l1 and E1 are
1

quantised. System 2 on the other hand is specified by the triplet (e2 , l2 , E2 ). System 1
shows fine structure splitting whereas there is no fine structure in system 2. It turns out,
however, that system 1 can be made exactly identical to system 2 if system 1 is subjected
to an additional external perturbation in potential, V (r), of the form:
2
3
4
+ 2 + 3
r
r
r

V (r) = 1 +

where there is no external magnetic field and i are constants. Determine these constants
in terms of the variables in the problem. Assume that the nuclei remain immobile and the
charges have equal masses m in both these cases.

5. Imagine a 2 + 1 dimensional universe where a star, that has burned out its energy,

is in the process of a gravitational collapse. The star is shaped as a big two dimensional
disc with a mass density . Let N be the number of free electrons in the star. Using these
informations answer the following questions:
(a) Evaluate the degeneracy and the gravitational pressures and determine the radius when
the star becomes a two-dimensional white dwarf. For the calculation of the degeneracy
pressure it might be easier to replace the disc by a two dimensional sheet. Will you result
change if instead the star was a two dimensional disc in a 3 + 1 dimensional space?
(b) In the limit when the size of the star is very big, the electrons will behave as two
dimensional relativistic particles (with negligible interactions between them). Give a reason
for that. Now, assuming the masses of the electrons to be very light1 , evaluate the Fermi
energy of the system. Using this evaluate the degeneracy pressure of the system once we
try to squeeze the disc to a smaller size. Again use the approximation as before.
(c) Clearly because of the relativistic effects the star should cross the white dwarf stage
and reach the so called neutron star stage. Using the analysis of pressures, argue whether
such a scenario is favorable or not. What, if any, decides the radius of the neutron star
here? Finally under what condition our two dimensional disc star becomes a black hole?
6. Let us derive the Plancks law for a very generic case! Imagine I have a system of
photons at a temperature T in some spacetime dimensions d + 1. Clearly the system will
be governed by Bose-Einstein statistics that will tell us the number of photons n(f ) lying
1

Meaning, they are massless for all practical purposes.

between frequencies f and f + df . For our case, let us assume that the new distribution
law is given by:
af k df
(1)
ehf /kT 1
where a and k are some given constants. The energy associated with these n(f ) photons
n(f ) df =

is given by u(f, T ) and has a maximum for the photon frequency fmax where fmax = x

kT
h

Show that x satisfies the following transcendental equation:

x = (k + 1)(1 ex )

(2)

which is independent of the constant a in (1). Show that for the distribution of the form
(1) the total energy is given by:
Etot = T k+2

(3)

where is a constant independent of the temperature. Derive the explicit form for and
show that for 3 + 1 dimensional spacetime we get the right behavior.

7. A metallic ball S1 is heated up to a temperature T so that it is releasing all its energies

via emission of photons. These photons appear from the excited electrons in the ball that
go from higher energy states to lower energy states. This also means that the photons
have varying frequencies. Now imagine we trap those photons in a thin shell between the
ball S1 and a surface S (see figure below):
S

S1

where the dark circle represents the ball S1 and the photons are trapped below S, i.e
essentially a two dimensional surface. Assuming now that the region between the ball and
the surface S to be a simple two-dimensional box2 , calculate the frequency distribution
that we will see at the equilibrium temperature T if we dig a hole on S.
8. Here are three cute little maths problems. They are not easy, but hopefully not too
hard!
(a) Suppose that f is a continuous function on [0, 2] such that f (0) = f (2). Show that
there is a real number x such that x [1, 2] with f (x) = f (x 1).
2

Of course this is a highly simplified situation. The real case is more involved technically. The

final result shouldnt be too different for the two cases.

(b) Note that

1
4

6=

1
2

but

1
4

14

1
2

21

. Argue qualitatively that there exists infinitely

many pairs of positive real numbers and such that 6= but = .

P an
(c) Let a0 , a1 , ..., an be real numbers with the property that n n+1
= 0. Prove that the
P
equation n an xn = 0 has at least one solution in the interval (0, 1).

9. As we will see in due course, one of the key issue that makes QCD a solvable sys-

tem is the so called asymptotic freedom. This simply means that at short distances, or
alternatively at very high energies, the quarks are basically free and they do not interact
with each other (in other words, the coupling constant is negligible). This means inside
a nucleus the quark structures of protons and neutrons would not lead to complications.
Let us then view the protons and neutrons to be point like fundamental fermions, and the
nucleus to be a three dimensional box of volume V L3 = R03 A where A is the atomic
number and R0 is a small constant. Let N be the number of neutrons and Z the number
of protons such that N Z. Using basic ideas of particles in a box, show that the total
energy of the nucleus is
2 (N Z)2
(4)
A
where i s are determined in terms of m = mp = mn , h and R0 . Observe that we have a
E = 1 A +

factor proportional to (N Z), which would vanish for atoms with N = Z. Also show that,
from the above analysis, i are both proportional to

h
2
mR20

but with different coefficients.

Determine these coefficients using an expansion in powers of x N Z. Use the fact that
x is a small number for almost all atoms to terminate your series.
10. The quantity that distinguishes bosons from fermions is the spin. For example
fermions are spin
thing about spin

1
2
1
2

particles whereas bosons are integer spin particles. Another important

particles is that they look different when seen from another coordinate

system. For example imagine we define the fermion wave function in our system by (~r)
(x, y, z) such that under a new coordinate system, given by rotation about the z-axis by
a small angle , we have the following changes:
~r ~r ,

(~r) e

(~r )

(5)

where and k are positive integers. In the limit where 0 and using (5) estimate
(~r) that I have to add to the original wavefunction to get the wavefunction in the new
coordinate system. Can you also determine3 a possible value of the integer k using these
analysis?
3

This part is optional.