Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 ib Paper 1 19D Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The angular momentum commutation relations are . The commutator product rule givessince the bracketed expression is symmetric in and is antisymmetric. Alsoproving .
For orbital angular momentum, . A differentiable radial function has , so its contraction with the antisymmetric symbol vanishes: . Put . The coordinate differential operators give , whileannihilates every power of , because . Since all annihilate the radial factor, the product rule yieldsSubstitution into the expression for gives the highest-weight complex-coordinate orbital wavefunction resultAs , lowering preserves this eigenvalue whenever the lowered function is nonzero. Explicitly,For the lowered function is zero, so it is not an eigenfunction. For the original nonzero function has the usual regular angular dependence. The PDF's “any integer” differential identities also hold locally for negative where , but those negative powers are singular on the axis and are not square-integrable regular angular eigenstates. The converted TeX incorrectly writes in place of the PDF's .