On the truncation of the harmonic oscillator wavepacket

Abstract

We present an interesting result regarding the implication of truncating the wavepacket of the harmonic oscillator. We show that disregarding the non-significant tails of a function which is the superposition of eigenfunctions of the harmonic oscillator has a remarkable consequence: namely, there exist infinitely many different superpositions giving rise to the same function on the interval. Uniqueness, in the case of a wavepacket, is restored by a postulate of quantum mechanics.