🧱 Wave packet scattering

3D visualization

🎯 Demonstration of how different views can seamlessly be attached to the same (physics) model
🧠 Based on QuantumScattering2D.html by Daniel V. Schroeder, Weber State University
⭐ More physics software by Daniel V. Schroeder can be found here
📌 See als Simulating and visualizing the double slit experiment with Python

About

This program simulates scattering of a quantum particle from a stationary barrier in two dimensions. The particle’s initial state is a Gaussian wavepacket, whose average energy you can adjust. You can choose from seven different barrier shapes, and adjust their properties. Try a variety of settings to explore reflection, transmission, tunneling, and interference.

The brightness of the wavefunction image indicates the wavefunction’s magnitude, while the color hue indicates the phase, going from red (pure real and positive) to light green (pure imaginary and positive) to cyan (pure real and negative) to purple (pure imaginary and negative) and finally back to red. Use the slider to adjust the overall brightness.

The simulation uses natural units in which the particle’s mass, Planck’s constant $\hbar$, and the (nominal) screen pixel width are all equal to $1$. It works by integrating a discretized version of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, with a grid spacing of one unit and a grid size of $400 \times 400$. The wavefunction is always zero along all edges of the square grid, so the particle is effectively trapped inside a $400 \times 400$ box. — Paraphrased from instructions at QuantumScattering2D.html