The spherical coordinate system. In the rectangular (Cartesian) coordinate system, you use x, y, and z to orient yourself. In the spherical coordinate system, you also use three quantities: as the figure shows. You can translate between the spherical coordinate system and the rectangular one this way: The r vector is length of the vector to the particle that has angular momentum, is the angle of r from the z axis, and is the angle of r from the x axis. Consider the equations for angular momentum: When you take the angular momentum equations with the spherical-coordinate-system conversion equations, you can derive the following: Okay, these equations look pretty involved. But there’s one thing to notice: They depend only on which means their eigenstates depend only on not on r.
![Spherical Spherical](http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/reference/CRC-formulas/img194.gif)
So the eigenfunctions of the operators in the preceding list can be denoted like this: Traditionally, you give the name to the eigenfunctions of angular momentum in spherical coordinates, so you have the following: All right, time to work on finding the actual form of You know that when you use the L 2 and L z operators on angular momentum eigenstates, you get this: So the following must be true: In fact, you can go further. Note that L z depends only on which suggests that you can split up into a part that depends on and a part that depends on Splitting up into parts looks like this: That’s what makes working with spherical coordinates so helpful — you can split the eigenfunctions up into two parts, one that depends only on and one part that depends only on.
Converting Cartesian, Cylindrical, and Spherical Coordinates To convert from spherical coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: r = ˆsin(˚) = z = ˆcos(˚) To convert from spherical coordinates to cartesian coordinates: x = ˆsin(˚)cos() y = ˆsin(˚)sin() z = ˆcos(˚) To convert from cartesian coordinates to spherical coordinates: ˆ2 = x2 +y2 +z2 tan. Converts from Cartesian (x,y,z) to Spherical (r,θ,φ) coordinates in 3-dimensions.