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Lecture

Hermitian Operators and Spectral Theorem

In course

MATH-115(b): Advanced linear algebra II

L'objectif du cours est d'introduire les notions de base de l'algèbre linéaire et de démontrer rigoureusement les résultats principaux du sujet. ...

Description

This lecture covers the concept of Hermitian operators and the Spectral Theorem, explaining the definition of adjoint operators, properties of auto-adjoint operators, and examples of Hermitian spaces. The instructor demonstrates the orthogonality of eigenvectors and the diagonalizability of Hermitian matrices.

Instructor

Marc Troyanov

Doctorat en mathématiques à l'Université de Genève (1987) - Postdoc à Paris et Salt-Lake City, puis professeur assistant à l'UQAM (Montréal). Venu en 1993 à l'EPFL comme professeur assistant, nommé MER en 1999 puis professeur titulaire en 2005. Domaine de recherche : géométrie différentielle, analyse sur les variétés et sur les espaces métriques.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Mathematics

Analysis: Functional analysis

Algebra: Linear algebra

Related concepts (32)

Hermitian adjoint

In mathematics, specifically in operator theory, each linear operator on an inner product space defines a Hermitian adjoint (or adjoint) operator on that space according to the rule where is the inner product on the vector space. The adjoint may also be called the Hermitian conjugate or simply the Hermitian after Charles Hermite. It is often denoted by A† in fields like physics, especially when used in conjunction with bra–ket notation in quantum mechanics.

Self-adjoint operator

In mathematics, a self-adjoint operator on an infinite-dimensional complex vector space V with inner product (equivalently, a Hermitian operator in the finite-dimensional case) is a linear map A (from V to itself) that is its own adjoint. If V is finite-dimensional with a given orthonormal basis, this is equivalent to the condition that the matrix of A is a Hermitian matrix, i.e., equal to its conjugate transpose A^∗. By the finite-dimensional spectral theorem, V has an orthonormal basis such that the matrix of A relative to this basis is a diagonal matrix with entries in the real numbers.

Unbounded operator

In mathematics, more specifically functional analysis and operator theory, the notion of unbounded operator provides an abstract framework for dealing with differential operators, unbounded observables in quantum mechanics, and other cases. The term "unbounded operator" can be misleading, since "unbounded" should sometimes be understood as "not necessarily bounded"; "operator" should be understood as "linear operator" (as in the case of "bounded operator"); the domain of the operator is a linear subspace, not necessarily the whole space; this linear subspace is not necessarily closed; often (but not always) it is assumed to be dense; in the special case of a bounded operator, still, the domain is usually assumed to be the whole space.

Hermitian matrix

In mathematics, a Hermitian matrix (or self-adjoint matrix) is a complex square matrix that is equal to its own conjugate transpose—that is, the element in the i-th row and j-th column is equal to the complex conjugate of the element in the j-th row and i-th column, for all indices i and j: or in matrix form: Hermitian matrices can be understood as the complex extension of real symmetric matrices.

Differential operator

In mathematics, a differential operator is an operator defined as a function of the differentiation operator. It is helpful, as a matter of notation first, to consider differentiation as an abstract operation that accepts a function and returns another function (in the style of a higher-order function in computer science). This article considers mainly linear differential operators, which are the most common type. However, non-linear differential operators also exist, such as the Schwarzian derivative.

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