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Heisenberg picture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In physics, the Heisenberg picture is a formulation (made by Werner Heisenberg while on Heligoland in the 1920s) of quantum mechanics in which
the operators (observables and others) incorporate a dependency on time, but the state vectors are time-independent.
It stands in contrast to the Schrdinger picture in which the operators are constant, instead, and the states evolve in time. The two pictures only differ
by a basis change with respect to time-dependency, which is the difference between active and passive transformations. The Heisenberg picture is the
formulation of matrix mechanics in an arbitrary basis, in which the Hamiltonian is not necessarily diagonal. It further serves to define a third, hybrid,
picture, the Interaction picture.
Contents
1 Mathematical details
2 Derivation of Heisenberg's equation
3 Commutator relations
4 Summary comparison of evolution in all pictures
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
Mathematical details
In the Heisenberg picture of quantum mechanics the state vector, , does not change with time, and an observable A satisfies
where H is the Hamiltonian and [,] denotes the commutator of two operators (in this case H and A). Taking expectation values yields the Ehrenfest
theorem featured in the correspondence principle.
By the Stone-von Neumann theorem, the Heisenberg picture and the Schrdinger picture are unitarily equivalent. In some sense, the Heisenberg
picture is more natural and convenient than the equivalent Schrdinger picture, especially for relativistic theories. Lorentz invariance is manifest in the
Heisenberg picture. This approach also has a more direct similarity to classical physics: by replacing the commutator above by the Poisson bracket, the
Heisenberg equation becomes an equation in Hamiltonian mechanics.
Derivation of Heisenberg's equation
The expectation value of an observable A, which is a Hermitian linear operator for a given state , is given by
In the Schrdinger picture, the state at time t is related to the state at time 0 by a unitary time-evolution operator, :
If the Hamiltonian does not vary with time, then the time-evolution operator can be written as
where H is the Hamiltonian and is the reduced Planck constant. Therefore,
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Define, then,
It follows that
Differentiation was according to the product rule, while A/t is the time derivative of the initial A, not the A(t) operator defined. The last equation
holds since exp(iHt/ ) commutes with H.
Thus
and hence emerges the above Heisenberg equation of motion, since the convective functional dependence on x(0) and p(0) converts to the same
dependence on x(t), p(t), so that the last term converts to A(t)/t . [X, Y] is the commutator of two operators and is defined as [X, Y] := XY YX.
The equation is solved by the A(t) defined above, as evident by use of the standard operator identity,
which implies
This relation also holds for classical mechanics, the classical limit of the above , given the correspondence between Poisson brackets and commutators,
In classical mechanics, for an A with no explicit time dependence,
so, again, the expression for A(t) is the Taylor expansion around t = 0.
Commutator relations
Commutator relations may look different than in the Schrdinger picture, because of the time dependence of operators. For example, consider the
operators x(t
1
), x(t
2
), p(t
1
) and p(t
2
). The time evolution of those operators depends on the Hamiltonian of the system. Considering the one-
dimensional harmonic oscillator,
,
the evolution of the position and momentum operators is given by:
,
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.
Differentiating both equations once more and solving for them with proper initial conditions,
leads to
,
.
Direct computation yields the more general commutator relations,
,
,
.
For , one simply recovers the standard canonical commutation relations valid in all pictures.
Summary comparison of evolution in all pictures
Evolution Picture
of: Heisenberg Interaction Schrdinger
Ket state constant
Observable constant
Density
matrix
constant
See also
Interaction picture
Bra-ket notation
Schrdinger picture
References
Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude; Bernard Diu, Frank Laloe (1977). Quantum Mechanics (Volume One). Paris: Wiley. pp. 312314. ISBN 0-471-
16433-X.
Albert Messiah, 1966. Quantum Mechanics (Vol. I), English translation from French by G. M. Temmer. North Holland, John Wiley & Sons.
External links
Pedagogic Aides to Quantum Field Theory (http://www.quantumfieldtheory.info) Click on the link for Chap. 2 to find an extensive, simplified
introduction to the Heisenberg picture.
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Categories: Quantum mechanics
This page was last modified on 9 June 2013 at 14:37.