PX262 - C9a - degeneracy
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in the case of orthonormality, it was assumed that all eigenvalues are different, which is not always true
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in a degenerate system there can be multiple states with distinct eigenfunctions with the same eigenvalue of a given dynamical variable, ie:
for and -
there are two places where the arguments go wrong:
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in orthonormality, the following equation was obtained:
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by the fact that there are different eigenvalues
, it was concluded: -
in case of degeneracy,
for , so the integral may be non-zero -
if there are several eigenfunctions,
, with the same eigenvalue, , it can be used to create another wavefunction as a linear superposition, eg: -
the outcome of measurement of a quantity can be evaluated as:
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this shows that
is an eigenfunction of , with the same eigenvalue, -
to check for orthogonality:
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thus, none of the eigenfunctions used to construct
is orthogonal to -
while in general, the linear combination of eigenfunctions is not an eigenfunction, if the eigenfunctions are degenerate, it will be