Frankfurt 2006 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 41: Quanteneffekte IV

Q 41.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 15, 2006, 10:55–11:10, HII

Correlations in s-Waves — •Rüdiger Mack and Wolfgang P. Schleich — Abteilung Quantenphysik, Universität Ulm

One of the fundamental facts of quantum mechanics is the correlation between position and momentum. Wigner functions express the correlation in negative domains of phase space. This is a significant difference to classical phase space.

Investigating radial symmetric wave packets, we discovered an astonishing behaviour: One expects, that a freely propagating wave packet spreads due to different momenta contained in the packet. But instead of spreading, the wave shrinks on short time scales.

As a measure of the extend of the wave packet we take the average separation ⟨ r⟩ of the s-wave from the origin. We find, that the effect of shrinking is limited to low dimensional systems, e.g. D≤2. We investigate different initial s-waves in order to enlarge this contraction effect. Moreover we address the question of the existence of an optimum wave function.