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In quantum mechanics, the position operator is the operator that corresponds to the position observable of a particle. When the position operator is considered with a wide enough domain (e.g. the space of tempered distributions), its eigenvalues are the possible position vectors of the particle. [1]
The Newton–Wigner position operators x 1, x 2, x 3, are the premier notion of position in relativistic quantum mechanics of a single particle. They enjoy the same commutation relations with the 3 space momentum operators and transform under rotations in the same way as the x, y, z in ordinary QM.
Informally stated, with certain technical assumptions, every representation of the Heisenberg group H 2n + 1 is equivalent to the position operators and momentum operators on R n. Alternatively, that they are all equivalent to the Weyl algebra (or CCR algebra ) on a symplectic space of dimension 2 n .
between the position operator x and momentum operator p x in the x direction of a point particle in one dimension, where [x, p x] = x p x − p x x is the commutator of x and p x , i is the imaginary unit, and ℏ is the reduced Planck constant h/2π, and is the unit operator. In general, position and momentum are vectors of operators and their ...
This quantum state can be represented as a superposition of basis states. In principle one is free to choose the set of basis states, as long as they span the state space. If one chooses the (generalized) eigenfunctions of the position operator as a set of basis functions, one speaks of a state as a wave function ψ(r) in position space.
The momentum operator can be described as a symmetric (i.e. Hermitian), unbounded operator acting on a dense subspace of the quantum state space. If the operator acts on a (normalizable) quantum state then the operator is self-adjoint. In physics the term Hermitian often refers to both symmetric and self-adjoint operators. [7] [8]
The mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics (QM) is built upon the concept of an operator. Physical pure states in quantum mechanics are represented as unit-norm vectors (probabilities are normalized to one) in a special complex Hilbert space. Time evolution in this vector space is given by the application of the evolution operator.
In quantum mechanics, a complete set of commuting observables (CSCO) is a set of commuting operators whose common eigenvectors can be used as a basis to express any quantum state. In the case of operators with discrete spectra, a CSCO is a set of commuting observables whose simultaneous eigenspaces span the Hilbert space and are linearly ...