Half revival in an infinite square well
ID: half-revival-in-an-infinite-square-well
For the infinite square well of length , the energy eigenvalues are , with . At , the dynamical phase is . Since the midpoint parity operator has eigenvalues in the same complete orthonormal basis, the time-evolution operator is exactly on every state. At every phase is one, giving a full revival.
Thus a state becomes its reflected copy, up to a global phase, at the half revival. Its position probability density is reflected, while its mean momentum changes sign because . For an initially reflection-symmetric probability density, the initial and half-revival position distributions agree even when their probability currents point in opposite directions.
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