Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/ib/paper-3/7a/solution

In the position representation, the orbital angular momentum operator is
On a common smooth domain use , . Expanding the product commutator gives
Contracting with the two alternating tensors gives the orbital angular momentum commutation relations:
For , these imply . Therefore yields
Thus
The nonzero qualification is necessary: a rotationally invariant wavefunction is annihilated by all three components, and the zero vector is not an eigenvector.

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