Lecture

Operator Matrix Elements

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In course

PHYS-426: Quantum physics IV

Introduction to the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics. Derivation of the perturbation expansion of Green's functions in terms of Feynman diagrams. Several applications will be presented, including non-perturbative effects, such as tunneling an ...

Description

This lecture covers the concept of operator matrix elements and the time-ordered product in quantum mechanics. It delves into the classical limit and explores various properties of the classical solution, providing insights into the Heisenberg and Schrödinger picture. The lecture also discusses the physical meaning of certain mathematical expressions and the computation of out-of-time order correlators using path integrals.

Instructors (2)

Giuseppe Carleo

Giuseppe Carleo is a computational quantum physicist, whose main focus is the development of advanced numerical algorithms tostudy challenging problems involving strongly interacting quantum systems.He is best known for the introduction of machine learning techniques to study both equilibrium and dynamical properties,based on a neural-network representations of quantum states, as well for the time-dependent variational Monte Carlo method.He earned a Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Theory from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy in 2011.He held postdoctoral positions at the Institut d’Optique in France and ETH Zurich in Switzerland, where he alsoserved as a lecturer in computational quantum physics.In 2018, he joined the Flatiron Institute in New York City in 2018 at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ), working as a Research Scientist and project leader, and also leading the development of the open-source project NetKet.Since September 2020 he is an assistant professor at EPFL, in Switzerland, leading the Computational Quantum Science Laboratory (CQSL).

Riccardo Rossi

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Heisenberg picture

In physics, the Heisenberg picture or Heisenberg representation is a formulation (largely due to Werner Heisenberg in 1925) of quantum mechanics in which the operators (observables and others) incorporate a dependency on time, but the state vectors are time-independent, an arbitrary fixed basis rigidly underlying the theory. It stands in contrast to the Schrödinger picture in which the operators are constant, instead, and the states evolve in time.

Schrödinger picture

In physics, the Schrödinger picture or Schrödinger representation is a formulation of quantum mechanics in which the state vectors evolve in time, but the operators (observables and others) are mostly constant with respect to time (an exception is the Hamiltonian which may change if the potential changes). This differs from the Heisenberg picture which keeps the states constant while the observables evolve in time, and from the interaction picture in which both the states and the observables evolve in time.

Interaction picture

In quantum mechanics, the interaction picture (also known as the interaction representation or Dirac picture after Paul Dirac) is an intermediate representation between the Schrödinger picture and the Heisenberg picture. Whereas in the other two pictures either the state vector or the operators carry time dependence, in the interaction picture both carry part of the time dependence of observables. The interaction picture is useful in dealing with changes to the wave functions and observables due to interactions.

Schrödinger equation

The Schrödinger equation is a linear partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a quantum-mechanical system. Its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of quantum mechanics. The equation is named after Erwin Schrödinger, who postulated the equation in 1925 and published it in 1926, forming the basis for the work that resulted in his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. Conceptually, the Schrödinger equation is the quantum counterpart of Newton's second law in classical mechanics.

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science. Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales.

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