what is wave packet

abhi sharma

hi this is abhimanyu.
i m a new comer in the world of quantum physics. pls tell me what is wave packet?

malawi_glenn

Same thing as a wave packet in electromagnetism etc ;-) Wave packet is a wave physics concept, it is not specific for quantum physics.

Rajini

Hi
Simply one can say wave packets are superposition of (single) waves

tim_lou

A wave packet is a localized (a function that goes to zero very fast as x goes to [itex]\pm \infty[/itex]) function that travels around. A good example is a Gaussian shaped function moving in time, for instance:

[tex]e^{-(x-vt)^2}[/tex]