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Lecture

Quantum Mechanics: Postulates and Observables

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 postulates of quantum mechanics, focusing on the representation of observables by self-adjoint operators and the spectral decomposition theorem. It explains how each observable corresponds to a Hermitian operator and how measurements are related to projections onto eigenspaces.

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)

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.

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.

Spectral theorem

In mathematics, particularly linear algebra and functional analysis, a spectral theorem is a result about when a linear operator or matrix can be diagonalized (that is, represented as a diagonal matrix in some basis). This is extremely useful because computations involving a diagonalizable matrix can often be reduced to much simpler computations involving the corresponding diagonal matrix. The concept of diagonalization is relatively straightforward for operators on finite-dimensional vector spaces but requires some modification for operators on infinite-dimensional spaces.

Self-adjoint

In mathematics, and more specifically in abstract algebra, an element x of a *-algebra is self-adjoint if . A self-adjoint element is also Hermitian, though the reverse doesn't necessarily hold. A collection C of elements of a star-algebra is self-adjoint if it is closed under the involution operation. For example, if then since in a star-algebra, the set {x,y} is a self-adjoint set even though x and y need not be self-adjoint elements. In functional analysis, a linear operator on a Hilbert space is called self-adjoint if it is equal to its own adjoint A^∗.

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.

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