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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

On the truncation of the harmonic oscillator wavepacket

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Published 13 April 2005 2005 IOP Publishing Ltd
, , Citation L Rebollo-Neira and S Jain 2005 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 38 L293 DOI 10.1088/0305-4470/38/17/L03

0305-4470/38/17/L293

Abstract

We present an interesting result regarding the implication of truncating the wavepacket of the harmonic oscillator. We show that disregarding the non-significant tails of a function which is the superposition of eigenfunctions of the harmonic oscillator has a remarkable consequence: namely, there exist infinitely many different superpositions giving rise to the same function on the interval. Uniqueness, in the case of a wavepacket, is restored by a postulate of quantum mechanics.

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10.1088/0305-4470/38/17/L03