Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-theoretical-physics-major-option-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/7/a/solution
Past exam of the theoretical physics major option course of the University of Oxford 2015 7 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Separate the Klein-Gordon equation as . The spatial equation is , with . The first Dirichlet boundary condition removes the cosine solution, and the second requires . ThusThere is no nonzero Dirichlet mode. The real field is built from both complex-conjugate time dependences, with mode functionsThe sine functions satisfy . Consequently the factor gives unit Klein-Gordon inner product for each positive-frequency mode and the canonical equal-time field commutator after quantization. A general solution is a superposition of these modes, rather than a claim that a single mode exhausts all solutions.
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