Abstract
In order to study the propagation of matter wave in the presence of a given potential profile, we begin with the Maxwell equations describing the behavior of electromagnetic waves. After specializing in the case of a simple three-layer structure, we derived the scalar wave equation, which is a close analogy with the Schrödinger equation. This allows us to take advantage of many well-established results from waveguide optics. Restricting ourselves to one dimension in this chapter, we make several comparisons of the two fundamental equations and relate some (perhaps) similar concepts in the two subjects.
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© 2014 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, Shanghai and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Cao, Z., Yin, C. (2014). Analogy Between Quantum Mechanics and Optics. In: Advances in One-Dimensional Wave Mechanics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40891-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40891-5_1
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