The Chapter that is and isn’t

Sritay Mistry
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

We hit a minor bump in our narrative road in the last post, and like the very insecure individual that you tend to be, it means you have to look back and remember every embarrassment that you’ve probably not really suffered in your life.

The first hole in our life is the Schrodinger’s equation, born of the same father as the more meme-fiable Schrodinger’s cat, except this time you’re in the box, and you don’t know you’ll be dead or alive after trying to understand it.

Scouring the internet, I came across this brilliant article by David W. Ward and Sabine Volkmer, where they derive the Schrodinger’s equation in a very simple manner. I strongly urge yourself to read through the article word by word. To summarize, every particle (all matter) has a probability associated with its location in space and its velocity. The probability distribution is in the form of waves, represented by wave functions which satisfy the Schrodinger’s equation. Knowing the wave functions for a given system means you know where you’re more likely to find particles, and therefore, the most likely configuration of the system for the given conditions. Once you know the system configuration, other details such as energies can be calculated.

We had earlier remarked that what DFT does is find the configuration of electrons around nuclei which results in minimum energy, and this was equivalent to finding the ground state wave function of the system. Now we know that the ground state wave function describes the system configuration, and hence the above statement holds.

Yes yes, i know, I have been unbelievably lazy with this one, merely linking an external article. I do not honestly believe i could have simplified stuff more significantly than the original authors, except perhaps sprinkling a bit of sarcasm over it. This is, therefore, the chapter that is and isn’t.

    Sritay Mistry

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