Probability Waves of Matter

Abstract

In Section 2.7 we learned that through the probability interpretation photons can be described by waves. We have made explicit use of the simple relation E = c|p| between energy and momentum of the photon, which holds only for particles moving with the velocity c of light. For particles with a finite rest mass m, which move with velocities v slow compared to the velocity of light, the corresponding nonrelativistic relation between energy and momentum is

$$ E = \frac{{p^2 }}{{2m}},p = mv $$