Hidden scale in quantum mechanics

Abstract

We show that the intriguing localization of a free particle wave-packet is possible due to a hidden scale present in the system. Self-adjoint extensions (SAE) is responsible for introducing this scale in quantum mechanical models through the nontrivial boundary conditions. We discuss a couple of classically scale invariant free particle systems to illustrate the issue. In this context it has been shown that a free quantum particle moving on a full line may have localized wave-packet around the origin. As a generalization, it has also been shown that particles moving on a portion of a plane or on a portion of a three dimensional space can have unusual localized wave-packet.