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Particle in a ring


In quantum mechanics, the case of a particle in a one-dimensional ring is similar to the particle in a box. The Schrödinger equation for a free particle which is restricted to a ring (technically, whose configuration space is the circle ) is

Using polar coordinates on the 1-dimensional ring of radius R, the wave function depends only on the angular coordinate, and so

Requiring that the wave function be periodic in with a period (from the demand that the wave functions be single-valued functions on the circle), and that they be normalized leads to the conditions


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