Table of the Radial Parts of the Wavefunctions for the Hydrogen Atom
The Schrodinger equation for the hydogen atom takes the form
This equation is separable which means that while the solution is a function of three variables, it is a product of three functions, each one of which is a function of only one variable, The general solution can be written
where
is itself a product of a function of
and
with a function of the form
where
and
are integers. The function
depends on
and
The first few functions of
are given in the table below.
| l |
|
1 | 0 |
|
2 | 0 |
|
2 | 1 |
|
3 | 0 |
|
3 | 1 |
|
3 | 2 |
|
The probability of finding the electron at radius
is plotted below for these radial wavefunctions. Each radial wavefunction is normalized to 1.
