Lecture 8

3D Rigid Rotor
• Quiz next Saturday 27/01/2018  starting of the H – atom problem.

Last lecture we saw that for a particle of mass on a ring of radius R,

1 iml
 m    e ; ml  0, 1, 2,....
l
2
squared =>independent of direction
2 2
ml
and, Eml  ; I  mR 2 Both energy and angular mom.
2I
are quantized.

1 2
LZ  ml E LZ
2I

Since, LZ and  are conjugate variables we have:


LZ .  ; Uncertainty principle.
2
It is important to note that for the quantum state  me   both energy and LZ are known with
certainty, i.e.,

E  0 and LZ  0 ; because eigenstate of Ĥ and L̂Z .

    ; Complete Uncertainty in angle  .

 Consistent with the fact that z

1
 m     m   for ml  0
2
; Uniform probability density
l
2 l

independent of  .

Rotor
(Quite similar to what happens for a free particle in 1-dim.)
x   ,   x   c independent of x.
2
px  0
2
&

Particle in box case – Zero-point energy is finite since position has to be definite, so Energy
cannot be simultaneously definite (zero).

Angular Momentum:  can be indefinite, Energy can be definite (zero).

Armed with this, we can think about the QM of a particle of mass m constrained to be a sphere,
where:  : again specifies rotation in a plane about Z - axis &  : specifies the “plane”.

Now, we have to think of, Lˆ 2  Lˆ x 2  Lˆ y 2  LˆZ 2

1 2
In analogy, we must also have E  L
2I

But now L̂ (operator) have a term corresponding to the  degree of freedom also.
2

Then the quantum state is going to be:   ,  

2
But, what is the form of L̂ ?
2
Turns out that, as one might expect, the best coordinates to express the operator L̂ is the one in
the  ,   coordinates (given that Radial part is fixed) is:

 1     1 2 
Lˆ    
2
2
 sin    sin 
  sin 2   2 
 

(Note, with  fixed at  / 2 we get back the L̂Z result)

2

Let us now go on with a more rigorous look into the 3D rigid rotor.
Thus, it is convenient to work in spherical polar coordinate system (where θ and ϕ
are part of the coordinates) than in cartesian coordinate system. In spherical polar
coordinate system: