9/4/2018 Time Development of a Gaussian Wave Packet *

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Time Development of a Gaussian Wave Packet *

So far, we have performed our Fourier Transforms at and looked at the result

only at . We will now put time back into the wave function and look at the wave
packet at later times. We will see that the behavior of photons and non-relativistic
electrons is quite different.

Assume we start with our Gaussian (minimum uncertainty) wavepacket

at . We can do the Fourier Transform to position

space, including the time dependence.

We write explicitly that depends on . For our free particle, this just means that

the energy depends on the momentum. For a photon, , so ,

and hence . For an non-relativistic electron, , so

, and hence .

To cover the general case, lets expand around the center of the wave packet in

k-space.

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We anticipate the outcome a bit and name the coefficients.

For the photon, and . For the NR electron, and

Performing the Fourier Transform, we get

We see that the photon will move with the velocity of light and that the wave packet will

not disperse, because .

For the NR electron, the wave packet moves with the correct group velocity,
, but the wave packet spreads with time. The RMS width is

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\bgroup\color{black}$\sigma=\sqrt{\al
t\over 2m}\right)^2}$\egroup .

A wave packet naturally spreads because it contains waves of different momenta and
hence different velocities. Wave packets that are very localized in space spread rapidly.

Next: Derivations and Computations Up: Wave Packets Previous: Position Space and
Momentum Contents
Jim Branson 2013-04-22

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