Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The ground state of a quantum-mechanical system is its stationary state of lowest energy; the energy of the ground state is known as the zero-point energy of the system. An excited state is any state with energy greater than the ground state. In quantum field theory, the ground state is usually called the vacuum state or the vacuum. If more ...
The video of an experiment showing vacuum fluctuations (in the red ring) amplified by spontaneous parametric down-conversion.. If the quantum field theory can be accurately described through perturbation theory, then the properties of the vacuum are analogous to the properties of the ground state of a quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator, or more accurately, the ground state of a measurement ...
The position of each atom is determined by the nature of the chemical bonds by which it is connected to its neighboring atoms. The molecular geometry can be described by the positions of these atoms in space, evoking bond lengths of two joined atoms, bond angles of three connected atoms, and torsion angles ( dihedral angles ) of three ...
In general, their ground states tend towards a prolate shape, [33] although experimental data hint at oblate ground-state shapes in certain nuclei, for example krypton-72. [34] Experiments also suggest that some heavy nuclei, such as barium-144 and radium-224, possess asymmetric pear shapes evidenced by their measured octupole moments.
A simple criterion for checking whether a density matrix is describing a pure or mixed state is that the trace of ρ 2 is equal to 1 if the state is pure, and less than 1 if the state is mixed. [ d ] [ 22 ] Another, equivalent, criterion is that the von Neumann entropy is 0 for a pure state, and strictly positive for a mixed state.
The non-classical nature of the superposition process is brought out clearly if we consider the superposition of two states, A and B, such that there exists an observation which, when made on the system in state A, is certain to lead to one particular result, a say, and when made on the system in state B is certain to lead to some different ...
All "stable" isotopes (stable by observation, not theory) are the ground states of nuclei, except for tantalum-180m, which is a nuclear isomer or excited state. The ground state, tantalum-180, is radioactive with half-life 8 hours; in contrast, the decay of the nuclear isomer is extremely strongly forbidden by spin-parity selection rules.
In quantum mechanics, the position operator is the operator that corresponds to the position observable of a particle. When the position operator is considered with a wide enough domain (e.g. the space of tempered distributions ), its eigenvalues are the possible position vectors of the particle.