Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
Every LVS has a dual that is also an LVS. The notation used for the elements
of this dual LVS is h| , h| . . . . The inner product h|i has the general properties
h|(|i + |i) = h|i + h|i
h|i = h|i
h|a i = ah|i
ha |i = a h|i
The norm of a vector is given by k k = h|i1/2 . The norm is positive definite
for every non-null vector. It vanishes iff |i = |i.
1. Check whether the following sets of elements form an LVS. If they do, find
the dimensionality of the LVS.
(a) The set of all n n matrices with complex entries.
(b) The set of all polynomials (of all orders) of a complex variable z.
(c) The set of all (Cartesian) tensors of rank 2 in three dimensions.
1
(d) The set of all antisymmetric (Cartesian) tensors of rank 2 in three di-
mensions.
(e) The set of all 2 2 matrices whose trace is zero.
d2 y dy
(f) The set of all solutions of the differential equation 2
3 + 2y = 0 .
dx dx
(g) The set of all nn unitary matrices. (U is unitary iff U U = U U = I .)
(h) The set of all n n hermitian matrices (with multiplication by real
scalars).
2. In the three-dimensional LVS with basis vectors
1 0 0
|1 i = 0 , |2 i = 1 , |3 i = 0 ,
0 0 1
2
8. Which of the following infinite sequences (x1 , x2 , ) listed below belong to
`2 , the LVS of square-summable sequences?
(a) xn = (1)n (ln n)/n
(b) xn = n!/(2n)!
(c) xn = (2/n)n
(d) xn = (2n + 1)/(3n + 4)2
(e) xn = en /nn
(f) xn = 2n/2 .
9. Identify the functions that belong to L2 (, ) , the LVS of square-integrable
fucntions of a real variable:
(a) f (x) = (x2 + 1)1/4
(b) f (x) = ex cos x
2
(c) f (x) = e1/x
(d) f (x) = (sin x)/x
2
(e) f (x) = x3 ex
(f) f (x) = (tanh x)/x .
10. In an n-dimensional LVS, consider the vectors |k i (k = 1, 2, . . . , n) defined
by
|1 i = (1, 0, 0, , 0) , |2 i = (21/2 , 21/2 , 0, 0, , 0) ,
, |n i = (n1/2 , n1/2 , n1/2 , , n1/2 ) .
Construct a vector |i such that hk |i = 1 for every k (1 k n) .
11. The set of all n n matrices (with complex entries) forms an LVS (Problem
1(a) above). The inner product of two elements in this space may be defined
as
(A, B) = Tr (A B),
where A denotes the hermitian conjugate of A.
(a) If A is hermitian, show that
1
(A, A) (I, A)2 .
n