20 The Schrédinger Equation in a Classical Context: A Seminar on Superconduetivity 21-1 Schrédinger's equation in a magnetic feld “This etre is only for entertainment, I woul ke to gve the lecture ina someviat ciferent ileus tose how it works out, It's not pat ofthe couse write sense tht it ont supposed tobe x las minut efor fo tach you some thing ew Bu, rather, Timi that Tm giving eminar or esearch eeprt on thesubjet toa more advanced audience, to people who have already been cducsted in quantum mecbanic, Tie main digeence betwee sia and reget ler i thatthe seminar sper doesnot cary ou ll the steps o ll the algebra. He says: "If you do sich and sch, ti what comes onsen of showing sof the deta, So inthis leur Il deserie the eal the way tong buts give you theres ofthe computations,” You should tale tht You're nt supposed to understand eveything inmates, but believe (more oF Te) that hinge would some out f you went through the step. Al that wie this subject wan to tall sbout, Tee recet and modern and would teu pets lginat alto give at a esearch seminar. My sblect isthe Shingo equation ina clsialSeting—the ease of superconduc. Ordinary, th wave function which appear i the Schrodinger equation appfe to only one or two parses” And te wavefunction il snot sme. thing that hase! meaningunlke the et ldo he vestor poet, or things ot tht ind. The wave function fra single patel sa “el” the sere that it function of potion but doesnot generally have a case! Sunfire, Neverthkse, thee ae some situations in which a quantum me= Shania wavefunction does have clasia signince, and they ate the ones would ie to take up. The pull quantum mechanical behavior of matter on 1 Sil ele des uly keel et on lage eal except nthe standard tay tat it produces Newtons avs—the ave of he svi clase mechani But there ate certain situations which te peclares of quantum mechanics an come ou in spel way ons lare sale ‘A Tow fmpertues, when the energy of «atm has been sedued very, very lo nsfead of lage ber of stats being invalid, only a ey, ve Sul numberof tats near the ground tte ae involved. ‘Under hone cc Stance te quantum mechani charac af that ground state can appeat on Inaronopi seal Iti the prose of hs stro show 4 contction between Gunturn mechanics and lrgeaal eftste—not the unl dscstion ofthe way that quantum mechanics reproduces Newtonian mechanics onthe average, bt Spr stutionin which quantum mechan wl produce ovn charclerisic fet on large or “macroscopic zl, Twill bea by reminding you of some ofthe propetis ofthe Schrodinger equation} Tani to deserve te behavior of pat n'a magnet ft ving the Sohringer equation, besue the supetednductve phenomena are invaved wth mupret elds An external magnets elds deserted bya vetr potent, tnd the problem is: what are the lave of quant mechan ina vector potential? The principle that desedbes the behavior of dumntum mechan ina. vetor potetial is very simple The amplitude that parte goes from one place to othe long certain route when ther’ feld present isthe sume asthe amp + Tm not rally reminding you, because I haven't shown you some of these equations before; but remember the spirit of this seminar. 24 magnetic field 21-2 The equation of continuity f« probabilities 21-3 Two kinds of momentom 24-4 The meaning of the wave function 21-5 Superconduetivity 21-6 The Meissner effect 1, 21-8 The dynamics of superconductivity 21-9 The Josephson junction Flux quantizationFig. 21-1. The ampliude to go from @ 108 along the pots T is proportional to exp (ig/fl Ads. tude that it would go along the same route when there's no field, multiphed by the ‘exponential of the line sntegral of the vector potential, times the electric charge divided by Planck’s constant! (see Fig. 21-1) Win bioneeolt {aa} aun Now without the vector potential the Schrodinger equation of a charged LG)Ceeeen ots where 61s the electric potential so that gis the potential energy.t Equation (21.1) 's equivalent to the statement that in a magnetic fetd the gradients n the Hamulton- van are replaced in each case by the gradient minus 4A, so that Eq. (21.2) becomes _ hay var” AY hoy x, Be ey dy(te -4)-(He = aa)e+ ait 010) Ths isthe Schrodinger equation fora parucle with charge 4 moving in an ee tromagnetic field A, ¢ (nonrelativistic, no spin). ‘To show that this 1s true I'd like to illustrate by a simple example in which instead of having continuous station ne have ane of tons ong the Yh sh the spacing and we have an amplitude ~K for an eleton tojump fom Soe atom (0 another when there a0 eldt Now according to Ba. CLD i ‘there’s @ vector potential in the x-direction A,(x, ), the amplitude to jump will be altered from what st was before by a factor exp (ig/A.b), the exponent being ‘atin the vector potential ategated rom one som tothe next. For simpli Well wate (@A)4a =F) since Awl in peer depend on. IC the an Tove to Vind the electron atthe mom "located at iv called CC) = Co ten =F cea) Clay — Ke" + = Kel" — by 1) ‘There are three pieces. Fits, there’ some energy Eo f the electron 1s located atx. As usual, that gives the term EyC(x). Next, there isthe term ~KC(x + 6), Which 1s the amplitude for the electron to have jumped backwards one step from atom“ + 1,” located at x + 6. However, in doing so in a vector potential, the phase of the amplitude must be shifted according to the rule in Eg. (211). If A, is not changing appreciably in one atomic spacing, the integral can be writen a5, Just the value of 4, at the midpoint, umes the spacing 6. So (1g/A) times the mtegral 1s just 6f(x + 6/2). Since the electron 1s jumping backwards, 1 showed this phase shift with a munus sign. That gives the second piece. In the same manner there's a certain amplitude to have jumped from the other side, but this time we need the vector potential ata distance (6/2) on the other side of x, times the dis- tance 6. That gives the third piece. The sum gues the equation for the amplitude to be at x in a veetor potential Now we know that if the function C(x) 18 smooth enough (we take the long wavelength limit), and if’ we let the atoms get closer together, Eq, (16.4) will approach the behavior of an electron in free space. So the next step is to expand both sides of (21.4) in powers of b, assuming b is very small. For example, if zero the right-hand side ts just (Ey — 2K)C(a) $0 in the zeroth approximation * Volume Hf, Section 15-5. + Not to be eonfused wath our earlier use of for a state label? 4} Kis the same quantity that was called an the problem of a lnear Iatce with no magnetic field See Chapter 13, a2the energy is E> — 2K. Next comes the terms in 6. But because the two ex ponentials have opposite signs, only even powers of b remain, So if you make a ‘Taylor expansion of C(2), of (2), and of the exponentials, and then collect the terms in 52, you get 2000) _ Kew) tat EgC(x) ~ 2KC(x) = RBC") — YEIC) — FIC) — FOIE}. 21S) (The “primes” mean differentiation with respect to x.) ‘Now this horrible combination of things looks quite complicated. But ‘mathematically its exactly the same as € — 20900) ~ 2[2.— ineo][2.— yeo]cw. er The second bracket operating on C(x) gives C'(s) plus f2)O(x). The first bracket operating on these two terms gives the term and terms in the ist derivative of f(s) and the first derivative of C(x). Now remember that the solutions for zero magnetic feld® representa particle with an elective mass me given by fh xe = mets If you then set Ey = ~2K, and put back f(x) = (@/A)Ae, you can easily check that Eq, (21.6 is the same as the fist part of Eq. (21.3). (The origin of the potential energy term is well known, so I haven't bothered to include it inthis discussion.) ‘The proposition of Eq. (21.1) that the vector potential changes all the amplitudes by the exponential factor is the same as the rule that the momentum operator, i/i)W gets replaced by as you see in the Schrédinger equation of (21.3). 21-2 The equation of continuity for probabilities Now I turn to a second point. An important part of the Schrédinger equation for a single particle isthe idea that the probability to find the particle at a position is given by the absolute square of the wave function, It is also characteristic of the quantum mechanics that probability is conserved in a local sense, When the probability of finding the electron somewhere decreases, while the probability of the electron being elsewhere increases (Keeping the total probability unchanged), something must be going on in between. In other words, the electron has a con- tinuity in the sense that if the probability decreases at one place and builds up at another place, there must be some kind of flow between. If you put a wal, for ‘example, in the way, it will have an influence and the probabilities will not be the same, So the conservation of probability alone is not the complete statement of the conservation law, just as the conservation of energy alone is not as deep and important as the focal conservation of energy. If energy is disappearing, there rust be a flow of energy to correspond. In the same way, we would like to find a “current” of probability such that if there is any change in the probability density (the probability of being found in a unit volume), it can be considered as coming from an inflow or an outflow due to some current. This current would be a vector which could be interpreted this way—the x component would be the net prob- ability per second and per unit area that a particle passes in the x direction across 1 plane parallel to the y-r plane. Passage toward +x is considered a positive flow, and passage in the opposite direction, a negative flow. » Section 13-3. 8 Volume If, Section 27-1,