Visual Schrödinger: A Visualizer-Solver Applet for the One-Dimensional Schrödinger Equation

Kevin Schmidt
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona 85287

Michael A. Lee
Department of Physics
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio 44242

This Web-based applet numerically solves the one-dimensional Schrödinger equation for a variety of standard Hamiltonians and permits users to define their own potential functions and rapidly display the results.

The applet has been designed primarily as a pedagogical tool. The first time user may go directly to the applet and, with the brief introduction, try a few typical problems.

After the initial orientation, investigation of more detailed example problems should prove illuminating. We include sections giving more documentation on advanced techniques, numerical methods and future direction, and discuss our design philosophy and goals.

This applet was prepared using freely available software tools. It is written in (almost) pure Java under Linux, with documentation written directly in latex and HTML. The applet is provided with a license that permits redistribution.

The documentation is also available in a printable form as either source files in a tar archive Schroedingerdoc.tar , postscript Schrodingerdoc.ps or Adobe PDF file Schroedingerdoc.pdf if you prefer a printed copy. To build the documentation from the source you will need L^ATEX2e, including the makeidx and graphicx packages and L^ATEX2HTML.