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It has been written in books that de Broglie waves are" waves of probability amplitude."

I am not able to understand the real physical significance of de broglie wavelength. Books have the same thing written everywhere. I mean waves of probability amplitude , but what one understand from it. Probability waves itself is a vague term.

Except the word " probability" what else matter waves depict or what one can feel it into the depth ?

Do de broglie waves has directional significance ?

crabNebula
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  • Does “spatial probability density” mean anything to you? Do you understand complex numbers? Without information about what you have studied so far, it is hard to know at what level to write an answer. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:36
  • What does “directional significance” mean? Are you asking if matter waves are vectorial? – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:38
  • Yes I do know , you can very well explain , I do read quantum mechanics , – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:38
  • @G.Smith yes , not necessarily vectorial , but can they have direction – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:39
  • Can you understand the Wikipedia article on probability amplitude? – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:39
  • They can, but don’t have to, propagate in a particular direction. At any point the probability amplitude does not point in any direction. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:40
  • I do know all these things. But here comes a lag between knowledge and understanding, because matter waves comes in earlier times of quantum when it was not much developed – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:41
  • Can one explain without using complex definition and all of quantum mechanics – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:42
  • Matter wave is just an old name for wavefunction. As in Schrodinger equation. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:42
  • You cannot understand it without complex numbers. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:43
  • @G.Smith thats why I have posted the question . Otherwise I would have read in the books – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:44
  • Matter waves are waves propagating or oscillating in space where the value at each point is a complex number. The square of the complex magnitude of that number is the probability density... how likely you are to find the particle there. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:45
  • What part of that, if any, needs more explanation? – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:46
  • Can you explain why do we write matter waves and not matter wave – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:47
  • For the same reason that we talk about “EM waves” even though there is really only one EM field which is waving. You can think of “the matter wave” of an electron in one direction and “the matter wave” of an electron moving in another direction. They just add as complex numbers, to make one combined matter wave, in the same way that EM waves add as vectors. We call this superposition. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:51
  • Ok thanks, for your help – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:53
  • These comments may help someone provide an answer at the appropriate level. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:54
  • I appreciate you for you hardwork , I was searching for an answer that one can explain at high school , with great indepth, and that is the only understanding. – crabNebula Feb 20 '20 at 20:55
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    My comment about adding the waves of two electrons isn’t quite right. I should have talked about one electron propagating in two different directions simultaneously. These two waves add. Waves for different electrons don’t add. This gets into how weird QM is, and our discussion is already too long. – G. Smith Feb 20 '20 at 20:59

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