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I'm studying quantum physics from MIT lectures and there's a concept that they alredy start with: momentum of a wave.

Given the wave-particle duality, I can imagine that momentum is possible to define, since the electron has mass and it's travelling somehow as a wave. So the only possible interpretation for momentum of a wave that I can think of is:

By saing that a wave has momentum $p$ we're actually saying that an electron with mass $m$ will have velociy $v = m/p$ in that wave (since $p=mv$).

Is my definition at least near of what it's supposed to mean?

my2cts
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Poperton
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1 Answers1

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Here you mean kinetic energy. Since it is a free particle.

E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2

\begin{align} E^2 &= \left(\frac{hfc}{v}\right)^2 + (mc^2)^2 \\ K &= -mc^2 + \sqrt{\left({hfc}/{v}\right)^2 + (mc^2)^2} \end{align}

It is the momentum of the free electron wave.

Árpád Szendrei
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