PX262 - C9b - schmidt orthogonalization
- a way of restoring orthogonality
- considering
and , which are not orthogonal, but have the same eigenvalue - defining a new eigenfunction, which is a linear combination of the two:
where - checking if the new function is orthogonal to
-
this shows that
and are orthogonal -
if there is another eigenfunction,
, with the same eigenvalue: where,
, and -
the factors,
, , and are called overlap integrals -
if there are further degenerate states, the process can be continued until a full set of orthogonal functions is obtained