Confinement energy bound from position support

ID: confinement-energy-bound-from-position-support

Suppose each Cartesian coordinate of a particle of mass is supported in an interval of length , in dimensions. Popoviciu's inequality on variances gives , and the Heisenberg uncertainty relation gives . Since ,
This is a rigorous but non-sharp confinement estimate. For a cubical infinite square well, separation of variables gives the stronger exact ground-state value . One must not identify a support length with a uniquely prescribed standard deviation or claim that the uncertainty estimate is the exact ground-state energy.

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