Is ZPE of an electron in an atom obtained intrinsically or extrinsically

[clearwater304]

There are two cases I could think of:

Case 1: The electron is constantly in a state of unrest due to the hiesenburg uncertainty principle, and the ZPE of that electron is caused from the state of its own unrest.

Case 2: The electron is constantly in a state of unrest becuase it is constantly accelerating, this acceleration cuases it to absorb vacuum energy as it moves through the vacuum field. This absorbtion is where the ZPE comes from in the electron.

I'm not really sure how you could prove this, becuase the electrons will always be moving in a field, so you can't really have an electron without a field around it.

 

[DrClaude]

The electron is not in a "state of unrest." It is in a stationary state, solution of the time-independent Schrödinger equation, in which neither the position nor the momentum is well defined.

In most cases, one doesn't go very far trying to applying classical concepts to quantum mechanics.