Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 ib Paper 1 15B Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
Using the momentum operator and its commutator with multiplication by , expansion of the factorized quantum Hamiltonian givesThe first-order zero-mode equation integrates toFor , its exponent is . It decays at both ends exactly when is even. If is even it grows at negative infinity. Thus a nonzero square-integrable zero mode exists exactly for odd .
For the Gaussian zero mode is . More generally, on normalized states with finite second moments and the usual integration-by-parts boundary conditions, is nonnegative. With zero means this implies, for every ,Minimizing the quadratic in at yieldsThe Gaussian mode attains equality. The argument concerns the same state for the whole positive family of factorized operators, which permits the minimization.