Keys: Space plays and pauses, R resets, [ and ] lower and raise the energy, P toggles painting. With painting on, drag across the plot to draw a landscape. Height shows |ψ|², colour shows the phase of ψ.
| Reflected | Inside | Transmitted | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simulation | – | – | – |
| Exact, this packet | – | 0 | – |
| Exact, plane wave at k₀ | – | 0 | – |
Transmission spectrum
The blue curve is the exact transmission of a plane wave at each kinetic energy; the orange shading is how the packet's probability is spread over those energies, and the dashed line marks its mean. Each finished run adds a dot (measured) inside a ring (exact for that packet). Click the spectrum to fire a packet at that energy.
Bound states
A confining well has no transmission spectrum: the packet can never leave. Instead it is a fixed mix of the well's stationary states, drawn as thin lines on the plot above. Each bar is the share of the packet in one state, at that state's energy; the shares do not change as the packet moves.