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11 - The Postulates of Quantum Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

Uri Peskin
Affiliation:
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa
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Summary

We review the postulates of quantum mechanics with respect to the representation of physical states and measurable quantities, their time evolution, and the interpretation of measurements. We first formulate the postulates in terms of wave functions and differential operators, and then reformulate them in the abstract Hilbert space of state vectors, using Dirac’s notations. Improper states subject to Dirac’s delta normalization are introduced, and the space of physical states is extended to include them. The postulates are rationalized by associating each Hermitian linear operator with a complete orthonormal system of its eigenvectors, where measurement probabilities depend on the projections of these eigenvectors on the system’s state vector. Particularly, wave functions are identified as projections of state vectors on the position operator eigenstates. State vectors representing multidimensional systems are formulated as tensor products of vectors in their subspaces. Finally, we address the general uncertainty relations in simultaneous measurements of different observables.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Aharonov, Y., Albert, D. Z., and Vaidman, L., “How the result of a measurement of a component of the spin of a spin-1/2 particle can turn out to be 100,” Physical Review Letters 60, 1351 (1988).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dirac, P. A. M., “The Principles of Quantum Mechanics” (Oxford University Press, 1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirsky, L., “An Introduction to Linear Algebra” (Dover, 1990).Google Scholar
Van Loan, C. F., “The ubiquitous Kronecker product,” Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 123, 85 (2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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  • The Postulates of Quantum Mechanics
  • Uri Peskin, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa
  • Book: Quantum Mechanics in Nanoscience and Engineering
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108877787.012
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  • The Postulates of Quantum Mechanics
  • Uri Peskin, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa
  • Book: Quantum Mechanics in Nanoscience and Engineering
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108877787.012
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Postulates of Quantum Mechanics
  • Uri Peskin, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa
  • Book: Quantum Mechanics in Nanoscience and Engineering
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108877787.012
Available formats
×