Everything about Wave packet
Short "burst" or "envelope" of restricted wave action that travels as a unit
In physics, a wave packet is a short burst of localized wave action that travels as a unit, outlined by an envelope. A wave packet can be analyzed into, or can be synthesized from, a potentially-infinite set of component sinusoidal waves of different wavenumbers, with phases and amplitudes such that they interfere constructively only over a small region of space, and destructively elsewhere. Any signal of a limited width in time or space requires many frequency components around a center frequency within a bandwidth inversely proportional to that width; even a Gaussian function is considered a wave packet because its Fourier transform is a "packet" of waves of frequencies clustered around a central frequency. Each component wave function, and hence the wave packet, are solutions of a wave equation. Depending on the wave equation, the wave packet's profile may remain constant or it may change while propagating. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: Wave packetA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Quadratic-phase wave packet transformInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Optical Multi-Bound SolitonsThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Tunneling of a Wave PacketCited 743 times
- Go sideways: Free particleA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Path-integral formulationA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun a collection of waves, travelling together
Noun a probability wave
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Tunneling of a Wave Packet
Quantum wave packet revivals
Attosecond electron wave packet interferometry
Generalized Gaussian wave packet dynamics
Wave Packet Isotope Separation
Rossby wave packet interactions
Variational principles for the time-independent wave-packet-Schrödinger and wave-packet-Lippmann–Schwinger equations
Real-space polariton wave packet imaging
🆕 Influential since 2022
📚 Books worth reading
- 📕Optical Multi-Bound SolitonsLe Nguyen Binh · 2015
Wave packets and their bifurcations in geophysical fluid dynamicsHuijun Yang · 1990- 📕On the behavior of three-dimensional wave packets in viscously spreading mixing layersThomas F. Balsa · 1994
Twisted pseudodifferential calculus and application to the quantum evolution of moleculesAndré Martinez · 2009
The physics and chemistry of wave packetsTurgay Uzer · 2000- 📕Chislennyĭ metod rascheta vzaimodeĭstvi͡ia volnovykh paketov v tunnelʹno-sv͡iazannykh opticheskikh volnovodakhS. G. Karataev · 1990
- 📕Wave packets in relativistic S-matrix theoryPeje Löfgren · 1967
- 📕Dynamics of wave packets in molecular and nuclear physics · 1986
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
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