Potential Step

Potential steps are created by energy potentials which form step-like barricades for particles. Before the potential step, the energy potential is uniformly zero, but at the step, the energy potential rises instantaneously to a finite value and remains constant at that value for all positions beyond the step. Here, we'll derive the wave function of a particle facing a potential step, then find the transmission and reflection coefficients of the particle upon encountering the step.