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rsferntoday at 10:37 AM1 replyview on HN

The reason is that electrons (like all quantum mechanical objects) are wavelike. In an isolated hydrogen atom, the electron is in a spherically symmetric environment, so the solutions to the wave equation have to be spherical standing waves, which are the spherical harmonics. The wave frequencies have to be integer divisions of 2pi or else they would destructively interfere. (Technically each solution is a product of a spherical harmonic function and a radial function that describes how fast the electron wave decays vs distance from the nucleus)

What’s interesting is if the environment is not spherically symmetric (consider an electron in a molecule) the solutions to the wave equation (the electronic wave functions) are no longer spherical harmonics, even though we like to approximate them with combinations of spherical harmonic basis functions centered on each nucleus. It’s kind of like standing waves on a circular drum head (hydrogen atom) vs standing waves on an irregular shaped drum head

Of course the nucleus also has a wave nature and in reality this interacts with the electrons, but in chemistry and materials we mostly ignore this and approximate the nucleus like a static point charge from the elctrons perspective because the electrons are so much lighter and faster


Replies

lukkotoday at 10:55 AM

Ah amazing - thank you for the response! I have a couple of related questions - is it that the non 2 pi frequencies exist, but they destructively interfere so we can't see them? My understanding is that the radial function for the electron is zero at the nucleus - there is no possibility of it being found there - but why is that the case?