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Vectronix
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- TL;DR Summary
- do they still move?
Can we all agree that electrons still move at absolute zero?
That’s right, it certainly does not mean a point particle moving at high speeds around the nucleus. If that were in fact an accurate model atoms would be unstable; this was one of the original motivations for developing quantum mechanics as an alternative model.Vectronix said:You mean like it doesn't mean a point particle moving at high speeds around the nucleus?
No, since at ##T=0## the electrons are in the ground state, which is an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian, and eigenstates of the Hamiltonian describe stationary states. So nothing moves.Vectronix said:TL;DR Summary: do they still move?
Can we all agree that electrons still move at absolute zero?
But ##\braket{p^2} \neq 0##. I guess it comes down to what "moving" meansvanhees71 said:Then, how can an energy eigenstate describe a moving particle? It's a stationary state!
DrClaude said:But ##\braket{p^2} \neq 0##. I guess it comes down to what "moving" means
Moment without movement. Just like in Bohmian mechanics. Since nearly all physicists agree that this is a shortcoming of Bohmian mechanics, my guess would be that vanhees71 is wrong in this specific case. I just can't believe that Bohmian mechanics should be right in this respect. It will often be the ground state of an harmonic oscillator, and of course oscillate is what it will do.vanhees71 said:These are quantum fluctuations, in this case "zero-point fluctuations", not motion.