Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/paper-1/section-b/b7/d/solution

For removal of a half-oscillator wall, the sudden approximation keeps the state unchanged during the change of potential. Its probability in the new full-oscillator ground state is the squared overlap:
where . Therefore
The integral runs only over the initially occupied half-line. The initial state is not the odd full-line eigenstate: it is zero, rather than negative, on the left. Indeed its overlap with that final first excited state is , giving probability , and the remaining probability lies in higher states. Subsequent evolution under the new fixed Hamiltonian operator changes the quantum phases of its energy components without changing these energy-measurement probabilities.

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