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THE GEOMETRY OF CENTRAL FORCES

Section 14.6 Visualization of States on a Ring

The applet below displays the real and imaginary parts of the wave function
\begin{equation*} \psi=\sum_m \left(c_m+id_m\right)e^{im\phi}e^{-im^2t} \end{equation*}
as well as the probability density \(|\psi|^2\text{.}\)

Activity 1.

Explore how the ring state is made up out of a linear combination of basis states.
Figure 1. Move the sliders to visualize linear combinations of eigenstates on the ring. The figure shows plots of the real and imaginary parts of the wave function \(\textrm{Re}\psi\text{,}\) \(\textrm{Im}\psi\text{,}\) and the probablity density \(|\psi|^2\text{.}\) Click on the button for an animation that demonstrates the time dependence.