Pauli Exclusion Principle

There are two ways of making the wavefunction reflect the indistinguishability of the two electrons:

?sym = [Xa(r1)*Xb(r2) + Xb(r1)*Xa(r2) ]* T(t)

and

?anti = [Xa(r1)*Xb(r2) - Xb(r1)*Xa(r2) ]* T(t) .

[We don’t have to worry about ? being negative, since the probability (which must be positive) depends on ?2 .]

Previous slide

Next slide

Back to first slide

View graphic version