Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-theoretical-physics-major-option-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/7/a/solution

Separate the Klein-Gordon equation as . The spatial equation is , with . The first Dirichlet boundary condition removes the cosine solution, and the second requires . Thus
There is no nonzero Dirichlet mode. The real field is built from both complex-conjugate time dependences, with mode functions
The 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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