Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/s3/1/b/solution

On the incident side, is the superposition of incoming and reflected waves, producing a standing-wave pattern whose travelling-wave de Broglie wavelength is . On the forbidden side, it decays exponentially and remains nonzero near the boundary. A sketch should therefore show oscillations for , a continuous function and slope at zero, and the evanescent tail for beside the potential step.
The quantum distinction is finite probability density inside the classically forbidden region, despite complete reflection. There is no transmitted flux at arbitrarily large positive for this semi-infinite step. A finite-width barrier would allow quantum tunnelling, a different boundary-value problem.
Figure 1.
A reflected wave joins a decaying tail inside a semi-infinite potential step
. Details.

New to topics? Read the docs here!