Information-Theoretic Properties of the Half-Line Coulomb Potential

Abstract

The half-line one-dimensional Coulomb potential is possibly the simplest D-dimensional model with physical solutions which has been proved to be successful to describe the behaviour of Rydberg atoms in external fields and the dynamics of surface-state electrons in liquid helium, with potential applications in constructing analog quantum computers and other fields. Here, we investigate the spreading and uncertaintylike properties for the ground and excited states of this system by means of the logarithmic measure and the information-theoretic lengths of Renyi, Shannon and Fisher types; so, far beyond the Heisenberg measure. In particular, the Fisher length (which is a local quantity of internal disorder) is shown to be the proper measure of uncertainty for our system in both position and momentum spaces. Moreover the position Fisher length of a given physical state turns out to be not only directly proportional to the number of nodes of its associated wavefunction, but also it follows a square-root energy law.