Quantum Physics For Dummies
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In quantum physics, to find the actual eigenfunctions (not just the eigenstates) of angular momentum operators like L2 and Lz, you turn from rectangular coordinates, x, y, and z, to spherical coordinates because it’ll make the math much simpler (after all, angular momentum is about things going around in circles). The following figure shows the spherical coordinate system.

The spherical coordinate system.
The spherical coordinate system.

In the rectangular (Cartesian) coordinate system, you use x, y, and z to orient yourself. In the spherical coordinate system, you also use three quantities:

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as the figure shows. You can translate between the spherical coordinate system and the rectangular one this way: The r vector is length of the vector to the particle that has angular momentum,

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is the angle of r from the z axis, and

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is the angle of r from the x axis.

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Consider the equations for angular momentum:

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When you take the angular momentum equations with the spherical-coordinate-system conversion equations, you can derive the following:

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Okay, these equations look pretty involved. But there’s one thing to notice: They depend only on

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which means their eigenstates depend only on

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not on r. So the eigenfunctions of the operators in the preceding list can be denoted like this:

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Traditionally, you give the name

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to the eigenfunctions of angular momentum in spherical coordinates, so you have the following:

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All right, time to work on finding the actual form of

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You know that when you use the L2 and Lz operators on angular momentum eigenstates, you get this:

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So the following must be true:

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In fact, you can go further. Note that Lz depends only on

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which suggests that you can split

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up into a part that depends on

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and a part that depends on

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Splitting

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up into parts looks like this:

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That’s what makes working with spherical coordinates so helpful — you can split the eigenfunctions up into two parts, one that depends only on

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and one part that depends only on

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About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Steven Holzner is an award-winning author of technical and science books (like Physics For Dummies and Differential Equations For Dummies). He graduated from MIT and did his PhD in physics at Cornell University, where he was on the teaching faculty for 10 years. He’s also been on the faculty of MIT. Steve also teaches corporate groups around the country.

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