Investigating Student Difficulties with Time dependence of Expectation Values in Quantum Mechanics

TL;DR

This study investigates the difficulties faced by advanced students in understanding the time dependence of expectation values in quantum mechanics, revealing common misconceptions and reasoning challenges.

Contribution

It introduces targeted assessments and interviews to identify specific student misconceptions about time-dependent expectation values in quantum mechanics.

Findings

Many students struggle with understanding time dependence of expectation values.

Students often have misconceptions about the role of the wave function evolution.

Interviews reveal reasoning difficulties behind written responses.

Abstract

Quantum mechanics is challenging even for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. In the Schr\"odinger representation, the wave function evolves in time according to the time dependent Schr\"odinger equation. The time dependence of the wave function gives rise to time dependence of the expectation value of observables. We have been exploring the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with time dependence of expectation values in quantum mechanics. We have developed and administered conceptual free response and multiple-choice questions to students to investigate these difficulties. We also interviewed 23 students individually using a think-aloud protocol to obtain a better understanding of the rationale behind students' written responses. We find that many students struggle with time dependence of expectation values of observables. We discuss some findings.