PHY 314: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Varsha 2014

Lecture 6
Anil Shaji
School of Physics, IISER TVM
The wave function. Continuous basis and normalization. The Dirac Delta function. Square
integrable functions

So far we have been interested in simple properties of quantum systems which can take on a
few values. Accordingly the Hilbert spaces we have dealt with so far were finite dimensional and
one could label the basis vectors of the space in a simple manner like |0i, |1i, |2i, . . . , |ni.
Very often, the property of the system that we are interested in might not take on a simple
discrete set of values. For example, the position of a quantum particle is something that we might
be interested in. If the particle is confined to move in one dimension (for the sake of simplicity)
then its position, x can be any real number between and .
We can extend our discussion of finite dimensional Hilbert spaces and label the state of the
particle corresponding to its position being x by the ket vector,
|xi

I.

THE WAVE FUNCTION

If we had a discrete set of states |i i we know that arbitrary superpositions of the form

i ci |i i

are all allowed states of our system. Here i are complex numbers. If the set of states we have is
labeled by a continuous variable like x, then we can write an arbitrary superposition as
|i =

dx (x)|xi.

Here the amplitudes, (x), is specified as a function of x rather than as a discrete set of numbers.
Specifically the quantity
(x) = hx|i
is called the wave function of the quantum system.
Note that we have implicitly chosen a basis for our infinite dimensional Hilbert space in writing
down the wave function. This basis is furnished by the continuous infinity of ket-vectors that we

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labelled as |xi. Normally we expect the basis vectors to be orthogonal to each other and normalized
properly. What do these two requirements mean in this new context where we have a continuous
basis set?
We require that hx|x0 i = 0 if x 6= x0 but in our case, x and x0 can be very very close to each
other and the corresponding kets still have to be orthogonal. To represent this condition we have
to use the Dirac Delta function

A.

The Dirac Delta function

The Dirac Delta function, invented by Paul Dirac, is given by

1 x=y

(x y) =

0 x 6= y

The delta function is not continuous and neither is any of its derivatives. So all it all it is a rather
badly behaved objects that some mathematicians even refuse to accept as a proper function. It is
normalized in the sense that
Z

(x) = 1

A very useful property of the delta function is,

Z

dx, f (x)(x x1 ) = f (x1 ).

To put it in words, the delta function picks out the value of any function, f (x), at a particular
point.

B.

normalization

Now we can try to normalize the general state |i. We have

h| =

dy (y)hy|

where is just the complex conjugate of , Notice that in the expressions for |i and h| I have
chosen the variables that are integrated over to be different. These variables that are integrated
over are for obvious reasons called dummy variables. Now we have
h|i =

dy

dx (y)(x)hy|xi

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Z

dy

=
0

dx (y)(x)(x y)

dx (x)(x)

dx |(x)|2 .

We now require that

dividing it with

2
dx |(x)|

be finite (less that infinity) so that we can normalize |i by

h|i.

We find that all wave functions should fall into the class of square integrable functions, that are
sometimes called L2 functions. In fact one can say that all square integrable functions represent
possible states of the quantum system.
The functions need not always be square integrable in the domain (, ). For instance, in
many cases of interest, the quantum system may be confined to some region in space. In those
cases square integrability is required only within that region of space.

C.

A few extra things

The Hilbert space of a quantum system whose states are labelled by a continuum of values
is really the space of square integrable functions. Since the Hilbert space is itself the space of
functions, we expect the basis states to also to some of those functions.
The basis set that is represented by kets of the form |x1 i corresponds to the family of functions
(x x1 ). In other words each position eigen-ket corresponds to a delta function at that position.
We can check that
hx1 |x2 i =

dx (x x1 )(x x2 ) = (x1 x2 )

so that we do indeed have an orthonormal basis set.

Several families of functions can furnish a basis set for the Hilbert space we are interested in.
Another basis set would be the family
fk (x) = eikx ,