A study of periodic potentials based on quadratic splines

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss a method based on a segmentary approximation of solutions of the Schrödinger equation by quadratic splines, for which the coefficients are determined by a variational method that does not require the resolution of complicated algebraic equations. The idea is the application of the method to one-dimensional periodic potentials. We include the determination of the eigenvalues up to a given level, and therefore an approximation to the lowest energy bands. We apply the method to concrete examples with interest in physics and discussed the numerical errors.