An Introduction to Thermal Physics · Problem A.20

Systems of Interacting Particles — Daniel Schroeder

Physics — Statistical Mechanics · angular-momentum-quantization

Problem

A very naive, but partially correct, way to understand quantization of angular momentum is as follows. Imagine that a particle is confined to travel around a circle of radius rr. Its angular momentum about the center is then ±rp\pm rp, where pp is the magnitude of its linear momentum at any moment. Let ss be a coordinate that labels the position of the particle around the circle, so that ss ranges from 0 to 2πr2\pi r. The wavefunction of this particle is a function of ss. Now suppose that the wavefunction is sinusoidal, so that pp is well defined. Using the fact that the wavefunction must undergo an integer number of complete oscillations over the entire circle, find the allowed values of pp and the allowed values of the angular momentum.

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