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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.
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]
Creation and annihilation operators can act on states of various types of particles. For example, in quantum chemistry and many-body theory the creation and annihilation operators often act on electron states. They can also refer specifically to the ladder operators for the quantum harmonic oscillator. In the latter case, the creation operator ...
In quantum mechanics, the exchange operator ^, also known as permutation operator, [1] is a quantum mechanical operator that acts on states in Fock space. The exchange operator acts by switching the labels on any two identical particles described by the joint position quantum state | x 1 , x 2 {\displaystyle \left|x_{1},x_{2}\right\rangle } . [ 2 ]
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 ...
Classically we have for the angular momentum =. This is the same in quantum mechanics considering and as operators. Classically, an infinitesimal rotation of the vector = (,,) about the -axis to ′ = (′, ′,) leaving unchanged can be expressed by the following infinitesimal translations (using Taylor approximation):
Since the operator is linear, they are valid for any linear combination of plane waves, and so they can act on any wave function without affecting the properties of the wave function or operators. Hence this must be true for any wave function. It turns out to work even in relativistic quantum mechanics, such as the Klein–Gordon equation above.
Consider a single particle in one dimension. Unlike classical mechanics, in quantum mechanics a particle neither has a well-defined position nor a well-defined momentum. In the quantum formulation, the expectation values [5] play the role of the classical variables.