Test 5.

(Take-Home Test)
[20 Marks + 20 Bonus Marks] Instructions: Hand in at start of lecture on Tuesday 15 October. You may consult fellow students but you may not copy their work. I reserve the right to question students in order to ascertain whether they handed in original work. You should therefore only hand in work that you can explain yourself. You may use a computer program such as Mathematica to perform algebraic or numerical simplication if you wish. 1. Do problem 7.20 in Griths. The following hints may be useful. Measure energy in units of h 2 /2ma2 . Measure position in units of a. In these units, H =
I

d2 r | |2 ,

(1)

where the region of integration I is the interior of the cross. Due to the symmetry of the trail wavefunction,
1 1 1

| = 4
0

dx
0

dy (x, y )2 + 8
1

dx
0

dy (x, y )2 . (2)

In the rst term on the right (x) = A(1 xy )e , while in the second term (x) = A(1 y )ex . Similar considerations apply to the integration in Eq. 2. [20 Marks] 2. (Bonus Question) Use the trail wave function cos (xy/2) e if |x| < 1 and |y | < 1 cos (x/2) e|y| if |x| < 1 and |y | > 1 (x, y ) = A cos (y/2) e|x| if |x| > 1 and |y | < 1

(3)

with as variational parameter, to obtain a lower upper bound on the ground state energy than in part (1). When calculating the normalization constant you may encounter the integral
1

dx
0

sin(x) C. x

(4)

You may take C 0.59 without proof. Give a likely explanation why the trail wave function of part (2) leads to a lower bound than the one in part (1). [ 20 Bonus Marks] 1