Paper 1, Section II, E

Principles of Quantum Mechanics
Part II, 2013

Consider a composite system of several identical particles. Describe how the multiparticle state is constructed from single-particle states. For the case of two identical particles, describe how considering the interchange symmetry leads to the definition of bosons and fermions.

Consider two non-interacting, identical particles, each with spin 1 . The singleparticle, spin-independent Hamiltonian H(x^i,p^i)H\left(\hat{\mathbf{x}}_{i}, \hat{\mathbf{p}}_{i}\right) has non-degenerate eigenvalues EnE_{n} and wavefunctions ψn(xi)\psi_{n}\left(\mathbf{x}_{i}\right) where i=1,2i=1,2 labels the particle and n=0,1,2,3,n=0,1,2,3, \ldots In terms of these single-particle wavefunctions and single-particle spin states 1,0|1\rangle,|0\rangle and 1|-1\rangle, write down all of the two-particle states and energies for:

(i) the ground state;

(ii) the first excited state.

Assume now that EnE_{n} is a linear function of nn. Find the degeneracy of the Nth N^{\text {th }}energy level of the two-particle system for:

(iii) NN even;

(iv) NN odd.