Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This set of lecture notes accompanies Frederic Schullers course on Quantum Theory, taught
in the summer of 2015 at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg as part
of the Elite Graduate Programme.
The entire course is hosted on YouTube at the following address:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPH7f_7ZlzxQVx5jRjbfRGEzWY_upS5K6
These lecture notes are not endorsed by Dr. Schuller or the University.
While I have tried to correct typos and errors made during the lectures (some helpfully
pointed out by YouTube commenters), I have also taken the liberty to add and/or modify
some of the material at various points in the notes. Any errors that may result from this
are, of course, mine.
If you have any comments regarding these notes, feel free to get in touch. Visit my
blog for the most up to date version of these notes
http://mathswithphysics.blogspot.com
My gratitude goes to Dr. Schuller for lecturing this course and for making it available
on YouTube.
Simon Rea
Contents
Further readings 9
Alphabetical Index 11
i
8 Spectra and perturbation theory
We will now focus on the spectra of operators and on the decomposition of the spectra of
self-adjoint operators. The significance of spectra is that the axioms of quantum mechanics
prescribe that the possible measurement values of an observable (which is, in particular, a
self-adjoint operator) are those in the so-called spectrum of the operator.
A common task in almost any quantum mechanical problem that you might wish to
solve is to determine the spectrum of some observable. This is usually the Hamiltonian,
or energy operator, since the time evolution of a quantum system is governed by the expo-
nential of the Hamiltonian, which is more practically determined by first determining its
spectrum.
More often than not, it is not possible to determine the spectrum of an operator exactly
(i.e. analytically). One then resorts to perturbation theory which consists in expressing the
operator whose spectrum we want to determine as the sum of an operator whose spectrum
can be determined analytically and another whose contribution is small in some sense to
be made precise.
1
Remark 8.3 . If H is finite-dimensional, then the converse of the above corollary holds ad
hence, the spectrum coincides with the set of eigenvalues. However, in infinite-dimensional
spaces, the spectrum of an operator contains more than just the eigenvalues of the operator.
These form a partition of (A), i.e. they are pairwise disjoint and their union is (A).
Clearly, p (A) c (A) = (A) but, since p (A) c (A) = pec (A) is not necessarily
empty, the point and continuous spectra do not form a partition of the spectrum in general.
Thus, we have
( )h|i = 0
and since 6= 0, it follows that = . That is, R.
2
Theorem 8.5. If A is a self-adjoint operator, then the elements of p (A) are precisely the
eigenvalues of A.
and hence
ran(A ) = ran(A ) = {0} = H.
Therefore,
/ p (A).
EigA () := { DA | A = }.
Remark 8.7 . Of course, it is possible that dim EigA () = in general. However, in this
section, we will only consider operators whose eigenspaces are finite-dimensional.
3
Lemma 8.8. Eigenvectors associated to distinct eigenvalues of a self-adjoint operator are
orthogonal.
A. Unperturbed spectrum
Let H0 be a self-adjoint operator whose eigenvalues and eigenvectors are known and satisfy
H0 en = hn en ,
where
the index varies over the range 1, 2, . . . , d(n), with d(n) := dim EigH0 (hn )
Note that, since we are assuming that all eigenspaces of H0 are finite-dimensional, EigH0 (hn )
is a sub-Hilbert space of H and hence, for each fixed n, we can choose the en so that
hen |en i = .
In fact, thanks to our previous lemma, we can choose the eigenvectors of H0 so that
hen |em i = nm .
H := H0 + W.
Further assume that H is self-adjoint for all (, ). Recall, however, that this
assumption does not force W to be self-adjoint.
4
We seek to understand the eigenvalue equation for H ,
H en () = hn ()en (),
by exploiting the fact that it coincides with the eigenvalue equation for H0 when = 0.
In particular, we will be interested in the lifting of the degeneracy of hn (for some fixed
n) once the perturbation W is switched on, i.e. when 6= 0. Indeed, it is possible, for
instance, that while the two eigenvectors en1 and en2 are associated to the same (degenerate)
eigenvalue hn of H0 , the perturbed eigenvectors en1 () and en2 () may be associated to
different eigenvalues of H . Hence the reason why added a -index to the eigenvalue in the
above equation. Of course, when = 0, we have hn () = hn for all .
Remark 8.9 . Recall that the Big O notation is defined as follows. If f and g are functions
I R R and a I, then we write
f (x) = O(g(x)) as x a
to mean
k, M > 0 : x I : 0 < |x a| < k |f (x)| < M |g(x)|.
The qualifier as x a can be omitted when the value of a is clear from the context. In
our expressions above, we obviously have as 0.
Inserting the formal power series ansatz into these conditions yields
(k)
(i) Imhen |n i = 0 for k = 1, 2, . . .
(1) (2) (1)
(ii) 0 = 2 Rehen |n i + 2 2 Rehen |n i + kn k2 + O(3 ).
1
German for educated guess.
5
Since (ii) holds for all (, ), we must have
(1) (2) (1)
Rehen |n i = 0, 2 Rehen |n i + kn k2 = 0.
(1) (2)
Since we know from (i) that Imhen |n i = 0 and Imhen |n i = 0, we can conclude
(1) (2) (1)
hen |n i = 0, hen |n i = 12 kn k2 .
(1)
That is, n is orthogonal to en and
(2) (1)
n = 21 kn k2 en + e
(H0 hn )en = 0
(1) (1)
(H0 hn )n = (W n )en
(2) (1) (1) (2)
(H0 hn )n = (W n )n + n en .
Of course, one may continue this expansion up to the desired order. Note that the zeroth
order equation is just our unperturbed eigenvalue equation.
E. First-order correction
To extract information from the first-order equation, let us project both sides onto the
unperturbed eigenvectors en (i.e. apply hen | i to both sides). This yields
(1) (1)
hen |(H0 hn )n i = hen |(W n )en i.
By self-adjointness of H0 , we have
(1) (1) (1)
hen |(H0 hn )n i = h(H0 hn ) en |n i = h(H0 hn )en |n i = 0.
Therefore,
(1) (1)
0 = hen |W en i + hen |n en i = hen |W en i + n
6
and thus, the first-order eigenvalue correction is
(1)
n = hen |W en i.
Note that the right-hand side of the first-order equation is now completely known and
(1)
hence, if H0 hn were invertible, we could determine n immediately. However, this is only
possible if the unperturbed eigenvalue hn is non-degenerate. More generally, we proceed as
follows. Let E := EigH0 (hn ). Then, we can rewrite the right-hand side of the first-order
equation as
(1) (1)
(W n )en = idH (W n )en
(1)
= (PE + PE )(W n )en
d(n)
(1) (1)
X
= hen |(W n )en ien PE W en + n PE en
=1
= PE W en
(1)
so that we have (H0 hn )n E . Note that the operator
PE (H0 hn ) : E E
is solved by
(1)
PE n = PE (H0 hn )1 PE W en .
(1)
The full eigenvector correction n is given by
d(n)
(1) (1)
X
idH n = (PE + PE )n = c en PE (H0 hn )1 PE W en ,
=1
where the coefficients c cannot be fully determined at this order in the perturbation.
What we do know is that our previous fixing of the phase and normalisation of the perturbed
(1)
eigenvectors implies that n is orthogonal to en , and hence we must have c = 0.
7
(1)
and recalling that hen |n i = 0 and hen |en i = 1, we have
(2) (1)
n = hen |W n i.
(1)
Plugging in our previous expression for n yields
d(n)
(2)
X
1
n = en W
c en W PE (H0 hn ) PE W en
=1
d(n)
X
= c hen |W en i hen |W PE (H0 hn )1 PE W en i
=1
d(n)
(1)
X
= c n hen |W PE (H0 hn )1 PE W en i
=1
= hen |W PE (H0 hn )1 PE W en i
since c = 0. One can show that the eigenvectors of H0 (or any other self-adjoint operator)
form an orthonormal basis of H. In particular, this implies than we can decompose the
identity operator on H as
d(n)
X X
idH = hen | ien .
n=1 =1
(2)
By inserting this appropriately into our previous expression for n , we obtain
d(m)
X |hem |W en i|
(2)
X
n = .
hm hn
m=1 =1
m6=n
Putting everything together, we have the following second-order expansion of the perturbed
eigenvalues
(1) (2)
hn () = hn + n + 2 n + O(3 )
d(m)
X X |hem |W en i|
2
= hn + hen |W en i + O(3 ).
hm hn
m=1 =1
m6=n
Remark 8.10 . Note that, while the first-order correction to the perturbed n eigenvalue
only depends on the unperturbed n eigenvalue and eigenvector, the second-order correction
draws information from all the unperturbed eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Hence, if we try
to approximate a relativistic system as a perturbation of a non-relativistic system, then the
second-order corrections may be unreliable.
8
Further readings
Moretti, Spectral Theory and Quantum Mechanics: With an Introduction to the Al-
gebraic Formulation, Springer 2013
Linear Algebra
Friedberg, Insel, Spence, Linear Algebra (4th Edition), Pearson 2002
Topology
Adamson, A General Topology Workbook, Birkhuser 1995
9
Functional analysis
Aliprantis, Burkinshaw, Principles of Real Analysis (Third Edition), Academic Press
1998
10
Alphabetical Index
C eigenvector 1
continuous spectrum 2
contrapositive 3 P
point spectrum 2
D
degeneracy 3 R
resolvent map 1
E
eigenspace 3 S
eigenvalue 1 spectrum 1