Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2019 / ii / Paper 2 / 34B (Applications of Quantum Mechanics)

For a normalized trial state $\psi$, expand it in an orthonormal basis of energy eigenstates, $\psi ={\sum }_n{c}_n{\psi }_n$. The Rayleigh quotient is thenThis is the quantum variational principle: minimizing the expectation of the Hamiltonian operator over any trial family gives an upper bound on the ground-state energy.

Let $\psi$ be the normalized ground-state wavefunction and form the normalized dilation ${\psi }_{\lambda }(x)={\lambda }^{1/2}\psi (\lambda x)$. Its kinetic and potential expectations areThe true ground state makes the energy stationary at $\lambda =1$, soThus the power-law quantum virial theorem gives

If $n\le -3$ and $A>0$, the two sides have opposite signs, because $T>0$ and $V>0$. If $A<0$, the scaled energy ${\lambda }^{2}T+{\lambda }^{-n}V$ tends to $-\infty$ as $\lambda \to \infty$, since $-n>2$, so the Hamiltonian is not bounded below. If $A=0$, the free particle has no normalizable ground state. Hence there is no normalizable ground state for $n\le -3$.

For $n=1$ take the normalized Gaussian functionThe Gaussian integral givesand thereforeIts unique minimum satisfiesAt this point $⟨V⟩=2⟨T⟩$, consistently with the virial theorem, and the resulting variational estimate is