Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-advanced-quantum-physics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/section-b/6/a/solution

Inside the infinite square well, the orbital and spin operators act on different factors of the tensor product. Write . The identity
shows that the exchange interaction commutes with and . The sum of the one-particle kinetic energies also commutes with them and with particle exchange. Thus one may use orbital quantum numbers together with the total-spin sector and projection , with physical .
For identical spin one-half particles the Pauli exclusion principle further restricts the states. The spin-one-half singlet state is antisymmetric in spin and must multiply a symmetric spatial wavefunction; a spin-one-half triplet state must multiply an antisymmetric spatial wavefunction. Thus label unordered orbital occupations in symmetry-adapted states, not arbitrary ordered product states. This gives the labels , with the paper's last label expressed in units of .

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