English

A new model for the quantum mechanics of the Hydrogen atom

Mathematical Physics 2026-04-15 v2 Algebraic Geometry math.MP Representation Theory

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a new model for the quantum-mechanical system of the hydrogen atom. We start with a four-dimensional Lorentzian quadratic space (V,q)(V,q) and let CVC \subset V be the corresponding cone. The Hilbert space of our model, denoted by HH, consists of L2L^2 functions on the cone, and observables are represented by operators in the algebra D(C)D(C) of algebraic differential operators on CC. We introduce a distinguished Schwartz subspace HH^{\infty} of HH that is naturally a D(C)D(C)-module. The Schr\"{o}dinger operator in our system is represented by a Schr\"{o}dinger family of operators in D(C)D(C). We compute the spectrum of the Schr\"{o}dinger family in the Schwartz space HH^{\infty} and show that it coincides with the spectrum in physics, and that solutions in HH^{\infty} correspond to the usual solutions in physics. The main differences from the standard model are as follows. First, we use the cone CC instead of R3\mathbb{R}^3 as our configuration space. As a result, the group of geometric symmetries of our configuration space is O(q)O(3,1)O(q)\simeq O(3,1) rather than O(3)R3O(3)\ltimes \mathbb{R}^3. Second, we use only algebraic operators with no singularities. Third, we do not impose any specific boundary conditions on solutions of our equations; these are all encoded in the Schwartz space HH^{\infty}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.14969,
  title  = {A new model for the quantum mechanics of the Hydrogen atom},
  author = {Joseph Bernstein and Eyal Subag},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.14969},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

A paragraph discussing how this work relates to Meng's earlier work was added