Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-course-of-the-year-3-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/paper-2b/section-a/26/c/solution

For the proposed wavefunction vanishes identically and cannot be normalized. A negative integer gives , which differs from the corresponding positive-integer wavefunction only by a physically irrelevant global phase. Both have the same positive energy, proportional to . Thus zero is inadmissible and negative labels are redundant. A negative integer is not forbidden by a separate negative-energy argument.

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