Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mphil-in-micro-and-nanotechnology-enterprise-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2020/paper-2/section-b/20/i/solution

The infinite exterior potential enforces outside . Within the well,
The boundary conditions give and , with . Since , normalization gives
These functions vanish outside the well. The ground state has energy and one density maximum at . The first excited state has energy , a central node, and maxima at . The second excited state has energy , nodes at , and maxima at .
There is no normalized state: that choice gives the zero function. The original wells figure shows all three wavefunctions and probability densities. An arbitrary overall wavefunction sign does not affect the probability distribution.

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