Electromagnetic Cavity - Physical Description of Electromagnetic Cavities

Physical Description of Electromagnetic Cavities

Electromagnetic cavities are represented by potential wells, also called boxes, which can be of limited or unlimited depth V₀.

Quantum-mechanic boxes are described by the time-independent Schrödinger equation:

with the additional boundary conditions

• the wave function is confined to the box (infinite deep potential well) or approaches zero as the distance from the wall increases to infinity, thus normalisable
• the wave function must be continuous
• the derivative of the wave function must be continuous

which leads to real solutions for the wave functions if the net energy of the particle is negative., i.e. if the particle is in a bound state.