# Playing with amplitudes

Pre-script (dated 26 June 2020): This post got mutilated by the removal of some material by the dark force. You should be able to follow the main story line, however. If anything, the lack of illustrations might actually help you to think things through for yourself. In any case, we now have different views on these concepts as part of our realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, so we recommend you read our recent papers instead of these old blog posts.

Original post:

Let’s play a bit with the stuff we found in our previous post. This is going to be unconventional, or experimental, if you want. The idea is to give you… Well… Some ideas. So you can play yourself. 🙂 Let’s go.

Let’s first look at Feynman’s (simplified) formula for the amplitude of a photon to go from point a to point b. If we identify point by the position vector r1 and point by the position vector r2, and using Dirac’s fancy bra-ket notation, then it’s written as:

So we have a vector dot product here: pr12 = |p|∙|r12|· cosθ = p∙r12·cosα. The angle here (α) is the angle between the and r12 vector. All good. Well… No. We’ve got a problem. When it comes to calculating probabilities, the α angle doesn’t matter: |ei·θ/r|2 = 1/r2. Hence, for the probability, we get: P = | 〈r2|r1〉 |2 = 1/r122. Always ! Now that’s strange. The θ = pr12/ħ argument gives us a different phase depending on the angle (α) between p and r12. But… Well… Think of it: cosα goes from 1 to 0 when α goes from 0 to ±90° and, of course, is negative when p and r12 have opposite directions but… Well… According to this formula, the probabilities do not depend on the direction of the momentum. That’s just weird, I think. Did Feynman, in his iconic Lectures, give us a meaningless formula?

Maybe. We may also note this function looks like the elementary wavefunction for any particle, which we wrote as:

ψ(x, t) = a·e−i∙θ = a·e−i(E∙t − px)/ħ= a·ei(E∙t)/ħ·ei(px)/ħ

The only difference is that the 〈r2|r1〉 sort of abstracts away from time, so… Well… Let’s get a feel for the quantities. Let’s think of a photon carrying some typical amount of energy. Hence, let’s talk visible light and, therefore, photons of a few eV only – say 5.625 eV = 5.625×1.6×10−19 J = 9×10−19 J. Hence, their momentum is equal to p = E/c = (9×10−19 N·m)/(3×105 m/s) = 3×10−24 N·s. That’s tiny but that’s only because newtons and seconds are enormous units at the (sub-)atomic scale. As for the distance, we may want to use the thickness of a playing card as a starter, as that’s what Young used when establishing the experimental fact of light interfering with itself. Now, playing cards in Young’s time were obviously rougher than those today, but let’s take the smaller distance: modern cards are as thin as 0.3 mm. Still, that distance is associated with a value of θ that is equal to 13.6 million. Hence, the density of our wavefunction is enormous at this scale, and it’s a bit of a miracle that Young could see any interference at all ! As shown in the table below, we only get meaningful values (remember: θ is a phase angle) when we go down to the nanometer scale (10−9 m) or, even better, the angstroms scale ((10−9 m).

So… Well… Again: what can we do with Feynman’s formula? Perhaps he didn’t give us a propagator function but something that is more general (read: more meaningful) at our (limited) level of knowledge. As I’ve been reading Feynman for quite a while now – like three or four years 🙂 – I think… Well… Yes. That’s it. Feynman wants us to think about it. 🙂 Are you joking again, Mr. Feynman? 🙂 So let’s assume the reasonable thing: let’s assume it gives us the amplitude to go from point a to point by the position vector along some path r. So, then, in line with what we wrote in our previous post, let’s say p·r (momentum over a distance) is the action (S) we’d associate with this particular path (r) and then see where we get. So let’s write the formula like this:

ψ = a·ei·θ = (1/rei·S = ei·p∙r/r

We’ll use an index to denote the various paths: r0 is the straight-line path and ri is any (other) path. Now, quantum mechanics tells us we should calculate this amplitude for every possible path. The illustration below shows the straight-line path and two nearby paths. So each of these paths is associated with some amount of action, which we measure in Planck units: θ = S/ħ

The time interval is given by = tr0/c, for all paths. Why is the time interval the same for all paths? Because we think of a photon going from some specific point in space and in time to some other specific point in space and in time. Indeed, when everything is said and done, we do think of light as traveling from point a to point at the speed of light (c). In fact, all of the weird stuff here is all about trying to explain how it does that. 🙂

Now, if we would think of the photon actually traveling along this or that path, then this implies its velocity along any of the nonlinear paths will be larger than c, which is OK. That’s just the weirdness of quantum mechanics, and you should actually not think of the photon actually traveling along one of these paths anyway although we’ll often put it that way. Think of something fuzzier, whatever that may be. 🙂

So the action is energy times time, or momentum times distance. Hence, the difference in action between two paths and j is given by:

δ= p·rj − p·ri = p·(rj − ri) = p·Δr

I’ll explain the δS < ħ/3 thing in a moment. Let’s first pause and think about the uncertainty and how we’re modeling it. We can effectively think of the variation in as some uncertainty in the action: δ= ΔS = p·Δr. However, if S is also equal to energy times time (= E·t), and we insist is the same for all paths, then we must have some uncertainty in the energy, right? Hence, we can write δas ΔS = ΔE·t. But, of course, E = E = m·c2 = p·c, so we will have an uncertainty in the momentum as well. Hence, the variation in should be written as:

δ= ΔS = Δp·Δr

That’s just logical thinking: if we, somehow, entertain the idea of a photon going from some specific point in spacetime to some other specific point in spacetime along various paths, then the variation, or uncertainty, in the action will effectively combine some uncertainty in the momentum and the distance. We can calculate Δp as ΔE/c, so we get the following:

δ= ΔS = Δp·Δr = ΔE·Δr/c = ΔE·Δt with ΔtΔr/c

So we have the two expressions for the Uncertainty Principle here: ΔS = Δp·Δr = ΔE·Δt. Just be careful with the interpretation of Δt: it’s just the equivalent of Δr. We just express the uncertainty in distance in seconds using the (absolute) speed of light. We are not changing our spacetime interval: we’re still looking at a photon going from to in seconds, exactly. Let’s now look at the δS < ħ/3 thing. If we’re adding two amplitudes (two arrows or vectors, so to speak) and we want the magnitude of the result to be larger than the magnitude of the two contributions, then the angle between them should be smaller than 120 degrees, so that’s 2π/3 rad. The illustration below shows how you can figure that out geometrically.Hence, if S0 is the action for r0, then S1 = S0 + ħ and S2 = S0 + 2·ħ are still good, but S3 = S0 + 3·ħ is not good. Why? Because the difference in the phase angles is Δθ = S1/ħ − S0/ħ = (S0 + ħ)/ħ − S0/ħ = 1 and Δθ = S2/ħ − S0/ħ = (S0 + 2·ħ)/ħ − S0/ħ = 2 respectively, so that’s 57.3° and 114.6° respectively and that’s, effectively, less than 120°. In contrast, for the next path, we find that Δθ = S3/ħ − S0/ħ = (S0 + 3·ħ)/ħ − S0/ħ = 3, so that’s 171.9°. So that amplitude gives us a negative contribution.

Let’s do some calculations using a spreadsheet. To simplify things, we will assume we measure everything (time, distance, force, mass, energy, action,…) in Planck units. Hence, we can simply write: Sn = S0 + n. Of course, = 1, 2,… etcetera, right? Well… Maybe not. We are measuring action in units of ħ, but do we actually think action comes in units of ħ? I am not sure. It would make sense, intuitively, but… Well… There’s uncertainty on the energy (E) and the momentum (p) of our photon, right? And how accurately can we measure the distance? So there’s some randomness everywhere. 😦 So let’s leave that question open as for now.

We will also assume that the phase angle for S0 is equal to 0 (or some multiple of 2π, if you want). That’s just a matter of choosing the origin of time. This makes it really easy: ΔSn = Sn − S0 = n, and the associated phase angle θn = Δθn is the same. In short, the amplitude for each path reduces to ψn = ei·n/r0. So we need to add these first and then calculate the magnitude, which we can then square to get a probability. Of course, there is also the issue of normalization (probabilities have to add up to one) but let’s tackle that later. For the calculations, we use Euler’s r·ei·θ = r·(cosθ + i·sinθ) = r·cosθ + i·r·sinθ formula. Needless to say, |r·ei·θ|2 = |r|2·|ei·θ|2 = |r|2·(cos2θ + sin2θ) = r. Finally, when adding complex numbers, we add the real and imaginary parts respectively, and we’ll denote the ψ0 + ψ1 +ψ2 + … sum as Ψ.

Now, we also need to see how our ΔS = Δp·Δr works out. We may want to assume that the uncertainty in p and in r will both be proportional to the overall uncertainty in the action. For example, we could try writing the following: ΔSn = Δpn·Δrn = n·Δp1·Δr1. It also makes sense that you may want Δpn and Δrn to be proportional to Δp1 and Δr1 respectively. Combining both, the assumption would be this:

Δpn = √n·Δpand Δrn = √n·Δr1

So now we just need to decide how we will distribute ΔS1 = ħ = 1 over Δp1 and Δr1 respectively. For example, if we’d assume Δp1 = 1, then Δr1 = ħ/Δp1 = 1/1 = 1. These are the calculations. I will let you analyze them. 🙂Well… We get a weird result. It reminds me of Feynman’s explanation of the partial reflection of light, shown below, but… Well… That doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Hmm… Maybe it does. 🙂 Look at the graph more carefully. The peaks sort of oscillate out so… Well… That might make sense… 🙂

Does it? Are we doing something wrong here? These amplitudes should reflect the ones that are reflected in those nice animations (like this one, for example, which is part of that’s part of the Wikipedia article on Feynman’s path integral formulation of quantum mechanics). So what’s wrong, if anything? Well… Our paths differ by some fixed amount of action, which doesn’t quite reflect the geometric approach that’s used in those animations. The graph below shows how the distance varies as a function of n

If we’d use a model in which the distance would increase linearly or, preferably, exponentially, then we’d get the result we want to get, right?

Well… Maybe. Let’s try it. Hmm… We need to think about the geometry here. Look at the triangle below. If is the straight-line path (r0), then ac could be one of the crooked paths (rn). To simplify, we’ll assume isosceles triangles, so equals c and, hence, rn = 2·a = 2·c. We will also assume the successive paths are separated by the same vertical distance (h = h1) right in the middle, so hb = hn = n·h1. It is then easy to show the following:This gives the following graph for rn = 10 and h= 0.01.

Is this the right step increase? Not sure. We can vary the values in our spreadsheet. Let’s first build it. The photon will have to travel faster in order to cover the extra distance in the same time, so its momentum will be higher. Let’s think about the velocity. Let’s start with the first path (= 1). In order to cover the extra distance Δr1, the velocity c1 must be equal to (r0 + Δr1)/= r0/+ Δr1/t = + Δr1/= c0 + Δr1/t. We can write c1 as c1 = c0 + Δc1, so Δc1 = Δr1/t. Now, the ratio of p1  and p0 will be equal to the ratio of c1 and c0 because p1/p= (mc1)/mc0) = c1/c0. Hence, we have the following formula for p1:

p1 = p0·c1/c0 = p0·(c0 + Δc1)/c0 = p0·[1 + Δr1/(c0·t) = p0·(1 + Δr1/r0)

For pn, the logic is the same, so we write:

pn = p0·cn/c0 = p0·(c0 + Δcn)/c0 = p0·[1 + Δrn/(c0·t) = p0·(1 + Δrn/r0)

Let’s do the calculations, and let’s use meaningful values, so the nanometer scale and actual values for Planck’s constant and the photon momentum. The results are shown below.

Pretty interesting. In fact, this looks really good. The probability first swings around wildly, because of these zones of constructive and destructive interference, but then stabilizes. [Of course, I would need to normalize the probabilities, but you get the idea, right?] So… Well… I think we get a very meaningful result with this model. Sweet ! 🙂 I’m lovin’ it ! 🙂 And, here you go, this is (part of) the calculation table, so you can see what I am doing. 🙂

The graphs below look even better: I just changed the h1/r0 ratio from 1/100 to 1/10. The probability stabilizes almost immediately. 🙂 So… Well… It’s not as fancy as the referenced animation, but I think the educational value of this thing here is at least as good ! 🙂

🙂 This is good stuff… 🙂

Post scriptum (19 September 2017): There is an obvious inconsistency in the model above, and in the calculations. We assume there is a path r1 = , r2, r2,etcetera, and then we calculate the action for it, and the amplitude, and then we add the amplitude to the sum. But, surely, we should count these paths twice, in two-dimensional space, that is. Think of the graph: we have positive and negative interference zones that are sort of layered around the straight-line path, as shown below.

In three-dimensional space, these lines become surfaces. Hence, rather than adding one arrow for every δ  having one contribution only, we may want to add… Well… In three-dimensional space, the formula for the surface around the straight-line path would probably look like π·hn·r1, right? Hmm… Interesting idea. I changed my spreadsheet to incorporate that idea, and I got the graph below. It’s a nonsensical result, because the probability does swing around, but it gradually spins out of control: it never stabilizes.That’s because we increase the weight of the paths that are further removed from the center. So… Well… We shouldn’t be doing that, I guess. 🙂 I’ll you look for the right formula, OK? Let me know when you found it. 🙂

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# Occam’s Razor

The analysis of a two-state system (i.e. the rather famous example of an ammonia molecule ‘flipping’ its spin direction from ‘up’ to ‘down’, or vice versa) in my previous post is a good opportunity to think about Occam’s Razor once more. What are we doing? What does the math tell us?

In the example we chose, we didn’t need to worry about space. It was all about time: an evolving state over time. We also knew the answers we wanted to get: if there is some probability for the system to ‘flip’ from one state to another, we know it will, at some point in time. We also want probabilities to add up to one, so we knew the graph below had to be the result we would find: if our molecule can be in two states only, and it starts of in one, then the probability that it will remain in that state will gradually decline, while the probability that it flips into the other state will gradually increase, which is what is depicted below.

However, the graph above is only a Platonic idea: we don’t bother to actually verify what state the molecule is in. If we did, we’d have to ‘re-set’ our t = 0 point, and start all over again. The wavefunction would collapse, as they say, because we’ve made a measurement. However, having said that, yes, in the physicist’s Platonic world of ideas, the probability functions above make perfect sense. They are beautiful. You should note, for example, that P1 (i.e. the probability to be in state 1) and P2 (i.e. the probability to be in state 2) add up to 1 all of the time, so we don’t need to integrate over a cycle or something: so it’s all perfect!

These probability functions are based on ideas that are even more Platonic: interfering amplitudes. Let me explain.

Quantum physics is based on the idea that these probabilities are determined by some wavefunction, a complex-valued amplitude that varies in time and space. It’s a two-dimensional thing, and then it’s not. It’s two-dimensional because it combines a sine and cosine, i.e. a real and an imaginary part, but the argument of the sine and the cosine is the same, and the sine and cosine are the same function, except for a phase shift equal to π. We write:

a·eiθ = cos(θ) – sin(−θ) = cosθ – sinθ

The minus sign is there because it turns out that Nature measures angles, i.e. our phase, clockwise, rather than counterclockwise, so that’s not as per our mathematical convention. But that’s a minor detail, really. [It should give you some food for thought, though.] For the rest, the related graph is as simple as the formula:

Now, the phase of this wavefunction is written as θ = (ω·t − k ∙x). Hence, ω determines how this wavefunction varies in time, and the wavevector k tells us how this wave varies in space. The young Frenchman Comte Louis de Broglie noted the mathematical similarity between the ω·t − k ∙x expression and Einstein’s four-vector product pμxμ = E·t − px, which remains invariant under a Lorentz transformation. He also understood that the Planck-Einstein relation E = ħ·ω actually defines the energy unit and, therefore, that any frequency, any oscillation really, in space or in time, is to be expressed in terms of ħ.

[To be precise, the fundamental quantum of energy is h = ħ·2π, because that’s the energy of one cycle. To illustrate the point, think of the Planck-Einstein relation. It gives us the energy of a photon with frequency f: Eγ = h·f. If we re-write this equation as Eγ/f = h, and we do a dimensional analysis, we get: h = Eγ/f ⇔ 6.626×10−34 joule·second [x joule]/[cycles per second] ⇔ h = 6.626×10−34 joule per cycle. It’s only because we are expressing ω and k as angular frequencies (i.e. in radians per second or per meter, rather than in cycles per second or per meter) that we have to think of ħ = h/2π rather than h.]

Louis de Broglie connected the dots between some other equations too. He was fully familiar with the equations determining the phase and group velocity of composite waves, or a wavetrain that actually might represent a wavicle traveling through spacetime. In short, he boldly equated ω with ω = E/ħ and k with k = p/ħ, and all came out alright. It made perfect sense!

I’ve written enough about this. What I want to write about here is how this also makes for the situation on hand: a simple two-state system that depends on time only. So its phase is θ = ω·t = E0/ħ. What’s E0? It is the total energy of the system, including the equivalent energy of the particle’s rest mass and any potential energy that may be there because of the presence of one or the other force field. What about kinetic energy? Well… We said it: in this case, there is no translational or linear momentum, so p = 0. So our Platonic wavefunction reduces to:

a·eiθ = ae(i/ħ)·(E0·t)

Great! […] But… Well… No! The problem with this wavefunction is that it yields a constant probability. To be precise, when we take the absolute square of this wavefunction – which is what we do when calculating a probability from a wavefunction − we get P = a2, always. The ‘normalization’ condition (so that’s the condition that probabilities have to add up to one) implies that P1 = P2 = a2 = 1/2. Makes sense, you’ll say, but the problem is that this doesn’t reflect reality: these probabilities do not evolve over time and, hence, our ammonia molecule never ‘flips’ its spin direction from ‘up’ to ‘down’, or vice versa. In short, our wavefunction does not explain reality.

The problem is not unlike the problem we’d had with a similar function relating the momentum and the position of a particle. You’ll remember it: we wrote it as a·eiθ = ae(i/ħ)·(p·x). [Note that we can write a·eiθ = a·e−(i/ħ)·(E0·t − p·x) = a·e−(i/ħ)·(E0·t)·e(i/ħ)·(p·x), so we can always split our wavefunction in a ‘time’ and a ‘space’ part.] But then we found that this wavefunction also yielded a constant and equal probability all over space, which implies our particle is everywhere (and, therefore, nowhere, really).

In quantum physics, this problem is solved by introducing uncertainty. Introducing some uncertainty about the energy, or about the momentum, is mathematically equivalent to saying that we’re actually looking at a composite wave, i.e. the sum of a finite or infinite set of component waves. So we have the same ω = E/ħ and k = p/ħ relations, but we apply them to n energy levels, or to some continuous range of energy levels ΔE. It amounts to saying that our wave function doesn’t have a specific frequency: it now has n frequencies, or a range of frequencies Δω = ΔE/ħ.

We know what that does: it ensures our wavefunction is being ‘contained’ in some ‘envelope’. It becomes a wavetrain, or a kind of beat note, as illustrated below:

[The animation also shows the difference between the group and phase velocity: the green dot shows the group velocity, while the red dot travels at the phase velocity.]

This begs the following question: what’s the uncertainty really? Is it an uncertainty in the energy, or is it an uncertainty in the wavefunction? I mean: we have a function relating the energy to a frequency. Introducing some uncertainty about the energy is mathematically equivalent to introducing uncertainty about the frequency. Of course, the answer is: the uncertainty is in both, so it’s in the frequency and in the energy and both are related through the wavefunction. So… Well… Yes. In some way, we’re chasing our own tail. 🙂

However, the trick does the job, and perfectly so. Let me summarize what we did in the previous post: we had the ammonia molecule, i.e. an NH3 molecule, with the nitrogen ‘flipping’ across the hydrogens from time to time, as illustrated below:

This ‘flip’ requires energy, which is why we associate two energy levels with the molecule, rather than just one. We wrote these two energy levels as E+ A and E− A. That assumption solved all of our problems. [Note that we don’t specify what the energy barrier really consists of: moving the center of mass obviously requires some energy, but it is likely that a ‘flip’ also involves overcoming some electrostatic forces, as shown by the reversal of the electric dipole moment in the illustration above.] To be specific, it gave us the following wavefunctions for the amplitude to be in the ‘up’ or ‘1’ state versus the ‘down’ or ‘2’ state respectivelly:

• C= (1/2)·e(i/ħ)·(E− A)·t + (1/2)·e(i/ħ)·(E+ A)·t
• C= (1/2)·e(i/ħ)·(E− A)·t – (1/2)·e(i/ħ)·(E+ A)·t

Both are composite waves. To be precise, they are the sum of two component waves with a temporal frequency equal to ω= (E− A)/ħ and ω= (E+ A)/ħ respectively. [As for the minus sign in front of the second term in the wave equation for C2, −1 = e±iπ, so + (1/2)·e(i/ħ)·(E+ A)·t and – (1/2)·e(i/ħ)·(E+ A)·t are the same wavefunction: they only differ because their relative phase is shifted by ±π.] So the so-called base states of the molecule themselves are associated with two different energy levels: it’s not like one state has more energy than the other.

You’ll say: so what?

Well… Nothing. That’s it really. That’s all I wanted to say here. The absolute square of those two wavefunctions gives us those time-dependent probabilities above, i.e. the graph we started this post with. So… Well… Done!

You’ll say: where’s the ‘envelope’? Oh! Yes! Let me tell you. The C1(t) and C2(t) equations can be re-written as:

Now, remembering our rules for adding and subtracting complex conjugates (eiθ + e–iθ = 2cosθ and eiθ − e–iθ = 2sinθ), we can re-write this as:

So there we are! We’ve got wave equations whose temporal variation is basically defined by Ebut, on top of that, we have an envelope here: the cos(A·t/ħ) and sin(A·t/ħ) factor respectively. So their magnitude is no longer time-independent: both the phase as well as the amplitude now vary with time. The associated probabilities are the ones we plotted:

• |C1(t)|= cos2[(A/ħ)·t], and
• |C2(t)|= sin2[(A/ħ)·t].

So, to summarize it all once more, allowing the nitrogen atom to push its way through the three hydrogens, so as to flip to the other side, thereby breaking the energy barrier, is equivalent to associating two energy levels to the ammonia molecule as a whole, thereby introducing some uncertainty, or indefiniteness as to its energy, and that, in turn, gives us the amplitudes and probabilities that we’ve just calculated. [And you may want to note here that the probabilities “sloshing back and forth”, or “dumping into each other” – as Feynman puts it – is the result of the varying magnitudes of our amplitudes, so that’s the ‘envelope’ effect. It’s only because the magnitudes vary in time that their absolute square, i.e. the associated probability, varies too.

So… Well… That’s it. I think this and all of the previous posts served as a nice introduction to quantum physics. More in particular, I hope this post made you appreciate the mathematical framework is not as horrendous as it often seems to be.

When thinking about it, it’s actually all quite straightforward, and it surely respects Occam’s principle of parsimony in philosophical and scientific thought, also know as Occam’s Razor: “When trying to explain something, it is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” So the math we need is the math we need, really: nothing more, nothing less. As I’ve said a couple of times already, Occam would have loved the math behind QM: the physics call for the math, and the math becomes the physics.

That’s what makes it beautiful. 🙂

Post scriptum:

One might think that the addition of a term in the argument in itself would lead to a beat note and, hence, a varying probability but, no! We may look at e(i/ħ)·(E+ A)·t as a product of two amplitudes:

e(i/ħ)·(E+ A)·t e(i/ħ)·E0·t·e(i/ħ)·A·t

But, when writing this all out, one just gets a cos(α·t+β·t)–sin(α·t+β·t), whose absolute square |cos(α·t+β·t)–sin(α·t+β·t)|= 1. However, writing e(i/ħ)·(E+ A)·t as a product of two amplitudes in itself is interesting. We multiply amplitudes when an event consists of two sub-events. For example, the amplitude for some particle to go from s to x via some point a is written as:

x | s 〉via a = 〈 x | a 〉〈 a | s 〉

Having said that, the graph of the product is uninteresting: the real and imaginary part of the wavefunction are a simple sine and cosine function, and their absolute square is constant, as shown below.

Adding two waves with very different frequencies – A is a fraction of E– gives a much more interesting pattern, like the one below, which shows an eiαt+eiβt = cos(αt)−i·sin(αt)+cos(βt)−i·sin(βt) = cos(αt)+cos(βt)−i·[sin(αt)+sin(βt)] pattern for α = 1 and β = 0.1.

That doesn’t look a beat note, does it? The graphs below, which use 0.5 and 0.01 for β respectively, are not typical beat notes either.

We get our typical ‘beat note’ only when we’re looking at a wave traveling in space, so then we involve the space variable again, and the relations that come with in, i.e. a phase velocity v= ω/k  = (E/ħ)/(p/ħ) = E/p = c2/v (read: all component waves travel at the same speed), and a group velocity v= dω/dk = v (read: the composite wave or wavetrain travels at the classical speed of our particle, so it travels with the particle, so to speak). That’s what’s I’ve shown numerous times already, but I’ll insert one more animation here, just to make sure you see what we’re talking about. [Credit for the animation goes to another site, one on acoustics, actually!]

So what’s left? Nothing much. The only thing you may want to do is to continue thinking about that wavefunction. It’s tempting to think it actually is the particle, somehow. But it isn’t. So what is it then? Well… Nobody knows, really, but I like to think it does travel with the particle. So it’s like a fundamental property of the particle. We need it every time when we try to measure something: its position, its momentum, its spin (i.e. angular momentum) or, in the example of our ammonia molecule, its orientation in space. So the funny thing is that, in quantum mechanics,

1. We can measure probabilities only, so there’s always some randomness. That’s how Nature works: we don’t really know what’s happening. We don’t know the internal wheels and gears, so to speak, or the ‘hidden variables’, as one interpretation of quantum mechanics would say. In fact, the most commonly accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics says there are no ‘hidden variables’.
2. But then, as Polonius famously put, there is a method in this madness, and the pioneers – I mean Werner Heisenberg, Louis de Broglie, Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, etcetera – discovered. All probabilities can be found by taking the square of the absolute value of a complex-valued wavefunction (often denoted by Ψ), whose argument, or phase (θ), is given by the de Broglie relations ω = E/ħ and k = p/ħ:

θ = (ω·t − k ∙x) = (E/ħ)·t − (p/ħ)·x

That should be obvious by now, as I’ve written dozens of posts on this by now. 🙂 I still have trouble interpreting this, however—and I am not ashamed, because the Great Ones I just mentioned have trouble with that too. But let’s try to go as far as we can by making a few remarks:

•  Adding two terms in math implies the two terms should have the same dimension: we can only add apples to apples, and oranges to oranges. We shouldn’t mix them. Now, the (E/ħ)·t and (p/ħ)·x terms are actually dimensionless: they are pure numbers. So that’s even better. Just check it: energy is expressed in newton·meter (force over distance, remember?) or electronvolts (1 eV = 1.6×10−19 J = 1.6×10−19 N·m); Planck’s constant, as the quantum of action, is expressed in J·s or eV·s; and the unit of (linear) momentum is 1 N·s = 1 kg·m/s = 1 N·s. E/ħ gives a number expressed per second, and p/ħ a number expressed per meter. Therefore, multiplying it by t and x respectively gives us a dimensionless number indeed.
• It’s also an invariant number, which means we’ll always get the same value for it. As mentioned above, that’s because the four-vector product pμxμ = E·t − px is invariant: it doesn’t change when analyzing a phenomenon in one reference frame (e.g. our inertial reference frame) or another (i.e. in a moving frame).
• Now, Planck’s quantum of action h or ħ (they only differ in their dimension: h is measured in cycles per second and ħ is measured in radians per second) is the quantum of energy really. Indeed, if “energy is the currency of the Universe”, and it’s real and/or virtual photons who are exchanging it, then it’s good to know the currency unit is h, i.e. the energy that’s associated with one cycle of a photon.
• It’s not only time and space that are related, as evidenced by the fact that t − x itself is an invariant four-vector, E and p are related too, of course! They are related through the classical velocity of the particle that we’re looking at: E/p = c2/v and, therefore, we can write: E·β = p·c, with β = v/c, i.e. the relative velocity of our particle, as measured as a ratio of the speed of light. Now, I should add that the t − x four-vector is invariant only if we measure time and space in equivalent units. Otherwise, we have to write c·t − x. If we do that, so our unit of distance becomes meter, rather than one meter, or our unit of time becomes the time that is needed for light to travel one meter, then = 1, and the E·β = p·c becomes E·β = p, which we also write as β = p/E: the ratio of the energy and the momentum of our particle is its (relative) velocity.

Combining all of the above, we may want to assume that we are measuring energy and momentum in terms of the Planck constant, i.e. the ‘natural’ unit for both. In addition, we may also want to assume that we’re measuring time and distance in equivalent units. Then the equation for the phase of our wavefunctions reduces to:

θ = (ω·t − k ∙x) = E·t − p·x

Now, θ is the argument of a wavefunction, and we can always re-scale such argument by multiplying or dividing it by some constant. It’s just like writing the argument of a wavefunction as v·t–x or (v·t–x)/v = t –x/v  with the velocity of the waveform that we happen to be looking at. [In case you have trouble following this argument, please check the post I did for my kids on waves and wavefunctions.] Now, the energy conservation principle tells us the energy of a free particle won’t change. [Just to remind you, a ‘free particle’ means it is present in a ‘field-free’ space, so our particle is in a region of uniform potential.] You see what I am going to do now: we can, in this case, treat E as a constant, and divide E·t − p·x by E, so we get a re-scaled phase for our wavefunction, which I’ll write as:

φ = (E·t − p·x)/E = t − (p/E)·x = t − β·x

Now that’s the argument of a wavefunction with the argument expressed in distance units. Alternatively, we could also look at p as some constant, as there is no variation in potential energy that will cause a change in momentum, i.e. in kinetic energy. We’d then divide by p and we’d get (E·t − p·x)/p = (E/p)·t − x) = t/β − x, which amounts to the same, as we can always re-scale by multiplying it with β, which would then yield the same t − β·x argument.

The point is, if we measure energy and momentum in terms of the Planck unit (I mean: in terms of the Planck constant, i.e. the quantum of energy), and if we measure time and distance in ‘natural’ units too, i.e. we take the speed of light to be unity, then our Platonic wavefunction becomes as simple as:

Φ(φ) = a·eiφ = a·ei(t − β·x)

This is a wonderful formula, but let me first answer your most likely question: why would we use a relative velocity?Well… Just think of it: when everything is said and done, the whole theory of relativity and, hence, the whole of physics, is based on one fundamental and experimentally verified fact: the speed of light is absolute. In whatever reference frame, we will always measure it as 299,792,458 m/s. That’s obvious, you’ll say, but it’s actually the weirdest thing ever if you start thinking about it, and it explains why those Lorentz transformations look so damn complicated. In any case, this fact legitimately establishes as some kind of absolute measure against which all speeds can be measured. Therefore, it is only natural indeed to express a velocity as some number between 0 and 1. Now that amounts to expressing it as the β = v/c ratio.

Let’s now go back to that Φ(φ) = a·eiφ = a·ei(t − β·x) wavefunction. Its temporal frequency ω is equal to one, and its spatial frequency k is equal to β = v/c. It couldn’t be simpler but, of course, we’ve got this remarkably simple result because we re-scaled the argument of our wavefunction using the energy and momentum itself as the scale factor. So, yes, we can re-write the wavefunction of our particle in a particular elegant and simple form using the only information that we have when looking at quantum-mechanical stuff: energy and momentum, because that’s what everything reduces to at that level.

Of course, the analysis above does not include uncertainty. Our information on the energy and the momentum of our particle will be incomplete: we’ll write E = E± σE, and p = p± σp. [I am a bit tired of using the Δ symbol, so I am using the σ symbol here, which denotes a standard deviation of some density function. It underlines the probabilistic, or statistical, nature of our approach.] But, including that, we’ve pretty much explained what quantum physics is about here.

You just need to get used to that complex exponential: eiφ = cos(−φ) + i·sin(−φ) = cos(φ) − i·sin(φ). Of course, it would have been nice if Nature would have given us a simple sine or cosine function. [Remember the sine and cosine function are actually the same, except for a phase difference of 90 degrees: sin(φ) = cos(π/2−φ) = cos(φ+π/2). So we can go always from one to the other by shifting the origin of our axis.] But… Well… As we’ve shown so many times already, a real-valued wavefunction doesn’t explain the interference we observe, be it interference of electrons or whatever other particles or, for that matter, the interference of electromagnetic waves itself, which, as you know, we also need to look at as a stream of photons , i.e. light quanta, rather than as some kind of infinitely flexible aether that’s undulating, like water or air.

So… Well… Just accept that eiφ is a very simple periodic function, consisting of two sine waves rather than just one, as illustrated below.

And then you need to think of stuff like this (the animation is taken from Wikipedia), but then with a projection of the sine of those phasors too. It’s all great fun, so I’ll let you play with it now. 🙂

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Some content on this page was disabled on June 20, 2020 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from Michael A. Gottlieb, Rudolf Pfeiffer, and The California Institute of Technology. You can learn more about the DMCA here:

# Quantum math: states as vectors, and apparatuses as operators

Pre-script (dated 26 June 2020): Our ideas have evolved into a full-blown realistic (or classical) interpretation of all things quantum-mechanical. In addition, I note the dark force has amused himself by removing some material. So no use to read this. Read my recent papers instead. 🙂

Original post:

I actually wanted to write about the Hamiltonian matrix. However, I realize that, before I can serve the plat de résistance, we need to review or introduce some more concepts and ideas. It all revolves around the same theme: working with states is like working with vectors, but so you need to know how exactly. Let’s go for it. 🙂

In my previous posts, I repeatedly said that a set of base states is like a coordinate system. A coordinate system allows us to describe (i.e. uniquely identify) vectors in an n-dimensional space: we associate a vector with a set of real numbers, like x, y and z, for example. Likewise, we can describe any state in terms of a set of complex numbers – amplitudes, really – once we’ve chosen a set of base states. We referred to this set of base states as a ‘representation’. For example, if our set of base states is +S, 0S and −S, then any state φ can be defined by the amplitudes C+ = 〈 +S | φ 〉, C0 = 〈 0S | φ 〉, and C = 〈 −S | φ 〉.

We have to choose some representation (but we are free to choose which one) because, as I demonstrated when doing a practical example (see my description of muon decay in my post on how to work with amplitudes), we’ll usually want to calculate something like the amplitude to go from one state to another – which we denoted as 〈 χ | φ 〉 – and we’ll do that by breaking it up. To be precise, we’ll write that amplitude 〈 χ | φ 〉  – i.e. the amplitude to go from state φ to state χ (you have to read this thing from right to left, like Hebrew or Arab) – as the following sum:

So that’s a sum over a complete set of base states (that’s why I write all i under the summation symbol ∑). We discussed this rule in our presentation of the ‘Laws’ of quantum math.

Now we can play with this. As χ can be defined in terms of the chosen set of base states too, it’s handy to know that 〈 χ | i 〉 and 〈 i | χ 〉 are each other’s complex conjugates – we write this as: 〈 χ | i 〉 = 〈 i | χ 〉* – so if we have one, we have the other (we can also write: 〈 i | χ 〉* = 〈 χ | i 〉). In other words, if we have all Ci = 〈 i | φ 〉 and all Di = 〈 i | χ 〉, i.e. the ‘components’ of both states in terms of our base states, then we can calculate 〈 χ | φ 〉 as:

〈 χ | φ 〉 = ∑ Di*Ci = ∑〈 χ | i 〉〈 i | φ 〉,

provided we make sure we do the summation over a complete set of base states. For example, if we’re looking at the angular momentum of a spin-1/2 particle, like an electron or a proton, then we’ll have two base states, +ħ/2 and +ħ/2, so then we’ll have only two terms in our sum, but the spin number (j) of a cobalt nucleus is 7/2, so if we’d be looking at the angular momentum of a cobalt nucleus, we’ll have eight (2·j + 1) base states and, hence, eight terms when doing the sum. So it’s very much like working with vectors, indeed, and that’s why states are often referred to as state vectors. So now you know that term too. 🙂

However, the similarities run even deeper, and we’ll explore all of them in this post. You may or may not remember that your math teacher actually also defined ordinary vectors in three-dimensional space in terms of base vectors ei, defined as: e= [1, 0, 0], e= [0, 1, 0] and e= [0, 0, 1]. You may also remember that the units along the x, y and z-axis didn’t have to be the same – we could, for example, measure in cm along the x-axis, but in inches along the z-axis, even if that’s not very convenient to calculate stuff – but that it was very important to ensure that the base vectors were a set of orthogonal vectors. In any case, we’d chose our set of orthogonal base vectors and write all of our vectors as:

A = Ax·e1 + Ay·e+ Az·e3

That’s simple enough. In fact, one might say that the equation above actually defines coordinates. However, there’s another way of defining them. We can write Ax, Ay, and Az as vector dot products, aka scalar vector products (as opposed to cross products, or vector products tout court). Check it:

A= A·e1, A= A·e2, and A= A·e3.

This actually allows us to re-write the vector dot product A·B in a way you’ve probably haven’t seen before. Indeed, you’d usually calculate A·B as |A|∙|B|·cosθ = A∙B·cosθ (A and B is the magnitude of the vectors A and B respectively) or, quite simply, as AxB+ AyB+ AzBz. However, using the dot products above, we can now also write it as:

We deliberately wrote B·A instead of Abecause, while the mathematical similarity with the

〈 χ | φ 〉 = ∑〈 χ | i 〉〈 i | φ 〉

equation is obvious, B·A = A·B but 〈 χ | φ 〉 ≠ 〈 φ | χ 〉. Indeed, 〈 χ | φ 〉 and 〈 φ | χ 〉 are complex conjugates – so 〈 χ | φ 〉 = 〈 φ | χ 〉* – but they’re not equal. So we’ll have to watch the order when working with those amplitudes. That’s because we’re working with complex numbers instead of real numbers. Indeed, it’s only because the A·B dot product involves real numbers, whose complex conjugate is the same, that we have that commutativity in the real vector space. Apart from that – so apart from having to carefully check the order of our products – the correspondence is complete.

Let me mention another similarity here. As mentioned above, our base vectors ei had to be orthogonal. We can write this condition as:

ei·ej = δij, with δij = 0 if i ≠ j, and 1 if i = j.

Now, our first quantum-mechanical rule says the same:

〈 i | j 〉 = δij, with δij = 0 if i ≠ j, and 1 if i = j.

So our set of base states also has to be ‘orthogonal’, which is the term you’ll find in physics textbooks, although – as evidenced from our discussion on the base states for measuring angular momentum – one should not try to give any geometrical interpretation here: +ħ/2 and +ħ/2 (so that’s spin ‘up’ and ‘down’ respectively) are not ‘orthogonal’ in any geometric sense, indeed. It’s just that pure states, i.e. base states, are separate, which we write as: 〈 ‘up’ | ‘down’ 〉 = 〈 ‘down’ | ‘up’ 〉 = 0 and 〈 ‘up’ | ‘up’ 〉 = 〈 ‘down’ | ‘down’ 〉 = 1. It just means they are just different base states, and so it’s one or the other. For our +S, 0S and −S example, we’d have nine such amplitudes, and we can organize them in a little matrix:

In fact, just like we defined the base vectors ei as e= [1, 0, 0], e= [0, 1, 0] and e= [0, 0, 1] respectively, we may say that the matrix above, which states exactly the same as the 〈 i | j 〉 = δij rule, can serve as a definition of what base states actually are. [Having said that, it’s obvious we like to believe that base states are more than just mathematical constructs: we’re talking reality here. The angular momentum as measured in the x-, y- or z-direction, or in whatever direction, is more than just a number.]

OK. You get this. In fact, you’re probably getting impatient because this is too simple for you. So let’s take another step. We showed that the 〈 χ | φ 〉 = ∑〈 χ | i 〉〈 i | χ 〉 and B·= ∑(B·ei)(ei·A) are structurally equivalent – from a mathematical point of view, that is – but B and A are separate vectors, while 〈 χ | φ 〉 is just a complex number. Right?

Well… No. We can actually analyze the bra and the ket in the 〈 χ | φ 〉 bra-ket as separate pieces too. Moreover, we’ll show they are actually state vectors too, even if the bra, i.e. 〈 χ |, and the ket, i.e. | φ 〉, are ‘unfinished pieces’, so to speak. Let’s be bold. Let’s just cut the 〈 χ | φ 〉 = ∑〈 χ | i 〉〈 i | χ 〉 by writing:

Huh?

Yes. That’s the power of Dirac’s bra-ket notation: we can just drop symbols left or right. It’s quite incredible. But, of course, the question is: so what does this actually mean? Well… Don’t rack your brain. I’ll tell you. We define | φ 〉 as a state vector because we define | i 〉 as a (base) state vector. Look at it this way: we wrote the 〈 +S | φ 〉, 〈 0S | φ 〉 and 〈 −S | φ 〉 amplitudes as C+, C0, C, respectively, so we can write the equation above as:

So we’ve got a sum of products here, and it’s just like A = Ax·e+ Ay·e2 + Az·e3. Just substitute the Acoefficients for Ci and the ebase vectors for the | i 〉 base states. We get:

| φ 〉 = |+S〉 C+ + |0S〉 C0  + |+S〉 C

Of course, you’ll wonder what those terms mean: what does it mean to ‘multiply’ C+ (remember: C+  is some complex number) by |+S〉? Be patient. Just wait. You’ll understand when we do some examples, so when you start working with this stuff. You’ll see it all makes sense—later. 🙂

Of course, we’ll have a similar equation for | χ 〉, and so if we write 〈 χ | i 〉 as Di, then we can write | χ 〉 = ∑ | i 〉〈 χ | i 〉 as | χ 〉 = ∑ | i 〉 Di.

So what? Again: be patient. We know that 〈 χ | i 〉 = 〈 i | χ 〉*, so our second equation above becomes:

You’ll have two questions now. The first is the same as the one above: what does it mean to ‘multiply’, let’s say, D0* (i.e. the complex conjugate of D0, so if D= a + ib, then D0* = a − ib) with 〈0S|? The answer is the same: be patient. 🙂 Your second question is: why do I use another symbol for the index here? Why j instead of i? Well… We’ll have to re-combine stuff, so it’s better to keep things separate by using another symbol for the same index. 🙂

In fact, let’s re-combine stuff right now, in exactly the same way as we took it apart: we just write the two things right next to each other. We get the following:

What? Is that it? So we went through all of this hocus-pocus just to find the same equation as we started out with?

Yes. I had to take you through this so you get used to juggling all those symbols, because that’s what we’ll do in the next post. Just think about it and give yourself some time. I know you’ve probably never ever handled such exercise in symbols before – I haven’t, for sure! – but it all makes sense: we cut and paste. It’s all great! 🙂 [Oh… In case you wonder about the transition from the sum involving i and j to the sum involving i only, think about the Kronecker expression: 〈 j | i 〉 = δij, with δij = 0 if i ≠ j, and 1 if i = j, so most of the terms are zero.]

To summarize the whole discussion, note that the expression above is completely analogous with the B·= BxA+ ByA+ BzAformula. The only difference is that we’re talking complex numbers here, so we need to watch out. We have to watch the order of stuff, and we can’t use the Dnumbers themselves: we have to use their complex conjugates Di*. But, for the rest, we’re all set! 🙂 If we’ve got a set of base states, then we can define any state in terms of a set of ‘coordinates’ or ‘coefficients’ – i.e. the Ci or Di numbers for the φ or χ example above – and we can then calculate the amplitude to go from one state to another as:

In case you’d get confused, just take the original equation:

The two equations are fully equivalent.

[…]

So we just went through all of the shit above so as to show that structural similarity with vector spaces?

Yes. It’s important. You just need to remember that we may have two, three, four, five,… or even an infinite number of base states depending on the situation we’re looking at, and what we’re trying to measure. I am sorry I had to take you through all of this. However, there’s more to come, and so you need this baggage. We’ll take the next step now, and that is to introduce the concept of an operator.

Look at the middle term in that expression above—let me copy it:

We’ve got three terms in that double sum (a double sum is a sum involving two indices, which is what we have here: i and j). When we have two indices like that, one thinks of matrices. That’s easy to do here, because we represented that 〈 i | j 〉 = δij equation as a matrix too! To be precise, we presented it as the identity matrix, and a simple substitution allows us to re-write our equation above as:

I must assume you’re shaking your head in disbelief now: we’ve expanded a simple amplitude into a product of three matrices now. Couldn’t we just stick to that sum, i.e that vector dot product ∑ Di*Ci? What’s next? Well… I am afraid there’s a lot more to come. For starters, we’ll take that idea of ‘putting something in the middle’ to the next level by going back to our Stern-Gerlach filters and whatever other apparatus we can think of. Let’s assume that, instead of some filter S or T, we’ve got something more complex now, which we’ll denote by A. [Don’t confuse it with our vectors: we’re talking an apparatus now, so you should imagine some beam of particles, polarized or not, entering it, going through, and coming out.]

We’ll stick to the symbols we used already, and so we’ll just assume a particle enters into the apparatus in some state φ, and that it comes out in some state χ. Continuing the example of spin-one particles, and assuming our beam has not been filtered – so, using lingo, we’d say it’s unpolarized – we’d say there’s a probability of 1/3 for being either in the ‘plus’, ‘zero’, or ‘minus’ state with respect to whatever representation we’d happen to be working with, and the related amplitudes would be 1/√3. In other words, we’d say that φ is defined by C+ = 〈 +S | φ 〉, C0 = 〈 0S | φ 〉, and C = 〈 −S | φ 〉, with C+ = C0 = C− = 1/√3. In fact, using that | φ 〉 = |+S〉 C+ + |0S〉 C0  + |+S〉 C− expression we invented above, we’d write: | φ 〉 = (1/√3)|+S〉 + (1/√3)|0S〉 C0  + (1/√3)|+S〉 C or, using ‘matrices’—just a row and a column, really:

However, you don’t need to worry about that now. The new big thing is the following expression:

〈 χ | A | φ〉

It looks simple enough: φ to A to χ. Right? Well… Yes and no. The question is: what do you do with this? How would we take its complex conjugate, for example? And if we know how to do that, would it be equal to 〈 φ | A | χ〉?

You guessed it: we’ll have to take it apart, but how? We’ll do this using another fantastic abstraction. Remember how we took Dirac’s 〈 χ | φ 〉 bra-ket apart by writing | φ 〉 = ∑ | i 〉〈 i | φ 〉? We just dropped the 〈 χ left and right in our 〈 χ | φ 〉 = ∑〈 χ | i 〉〈 i | φ 〉 expression. We can go one step further now, and drop the φ 〉 left and right in our | φ 〉 = ∑ | i 〉〈 i | φ 〉 expression. We get the following wonderful thing:

| = ∑ | i 〉〈 i | over all base states i

With characteristic humor, Feynman calls this ‘The Great Law of Quantum Mechanics’ and, frankly, there’s actually more than one grain of truth in this. 🙂

Now, if we apply this ‘Great Law’ to our 〈 χ | A | φ〉 expression – we should apply it twice, actually – we get:

As Feynman points out, it’s easy to add another apparatus in series. We just write:

Just put a | bar between B and A and apply the same trick. The | bar is really like a factor 1 in multiplication. However, that’s all great fun but it doesn’t solve our problem. Our ‘Great Law’ allows us to sort of ‘resolve’ our apparatus A in terms of base states, as we now have 〈 i | A | j 〉 in the middle, rather than 〈 χ | A | φ〉 but, again, how do we work with that?

Well… The answer will surprise you. Rather than trying to break this thing up, we’ll say that the apparatus A is actually being described, or defined, by the nine 〈 i | A | j 〉 amplitudes. [There are nine for this example, but four only for the example involving spin-1/2 particles, of course.] We’ll call those amplitudes, quite simply, the matrix of amplitudes, and we’ll often denote it by Aij.

Now, I wanted to talk about operators here. The idea of an operator comes up when we’re creative again, and when we drop the 〈 χ | state from the 〈 χ | A | φ〉 expression. We write:

So now we think of the particle entering the ‘apparatus’ A in the state ϕ and coming out of A in some state ψ (‘psi’). We can generalize this and think of it as an ‘operator’, which Feynman intuitively defines as follows:

The symbol A is neither an amplitude, nor a vector; it is a new kind of thing called an operator. It is something which “operates on” a state to produce a new state.”

But… Wait a minute! | ψ 〉 is not the same as 〈 χ |. Why can we do that substitution? We can only do it because any state ψ and χ are related through that other ‘Law’ of quantum math:

Combining the two shows our ‘definition’ of an operator is OK. We should just note that it’s an ‘open’ equation until it is completed with a ‘bra’, i.e. a state like 〈 χ |, so as to give the 〈 χ | ψ〉 = 〈 χ | A | φ〉 type of amplitude that actually means something. In practical terms, that means our operator or our apparatus doesn’t mean much as long as we don’t measure what comes out, so then we choose some set of base states, i.e. a representation, which allows us to describe the final state, i.e. 〈 χ |.

[…]

Well… Folks, that’s it. I know this was mighty abstract, but the next posts should bring things back to earth again. I realize it’s only by working examples and doing exercises that one can get some kind of ‘feel’ for this kind of stuff, so that’s what we’ll have to go through now. 🙂

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# Working with amplitudes

Note (22 May 2020): I am in the process of reviewing many of my posts—including the one below—as a result of my realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is based on the ring current model of an electron. It is a delicate exercise because I would like to keep track of the old posts. Perhaps I should copy all of them to some new site. Any case, the point is: I would significantly rephrase some of the below because I now believe spin is very real in quantum mechanics as well.

Original post:

Don’t worry: I am not going to introduce the Hamiltonian matrix—not yet, that is. But this post is going a step further than my previous ones, in the sense that it will be more abstract. At the same time, I do want to stick to real physical examples so as to illustrate what we’re doing when working with those amplitudes. The example that I am going to use involves spin. So let’s talk about that first.

#### Spin, angular momentum and the magnetic moment

You know spin: it allows experienced pool players to do the most amazing tricks with billiard balls, making a joke of what a so-called elastic collision is actually supposed to look like. So it should not come as a surprise that spin complicates the analysis in quantum mechanics too. We dedicated several posts to that (see, for example, my post on spin and angular momentum in quantum physics) and I won’t repeat these here. Let me just repeat the basics:

1. Classical and quantum-mechanical spin do share similarities: the basic idea driving the quantum-mechanical spin model is that of a electric charge – positive or negative – spinning about its own axis (this is often referred to as intrinsic spin) as well as having some orbital motion (presumably around some other charge, like an electron in orbit with a nucleus at the center). This intrinsic spin, and the orbital motion, give our charge some angular momentum (J) and, because it’s an electric charge in motion, there is a magnetic moment (μ). To put things simply: the classical and quantum-mechanical view of things converge in their analysis of atoms or elementary particles as tiny little magnets. Hence, when placed in an external magnetic field, there is some interaction – a force – and their potential and/or kinetic energy changes. The whole system, in fact, acquires extra energy when placed in an external magnetic field.

Note: The formula for that magnetic energy is quite straightforward, both in classical as well as in quantum physics, so I’ll quickly jot it down: U = −μB = −|μ|·|B|·cosθ = −μ·B·cosθ. So it’s just the scalar product of the magnetic moment and the magnetic field vector, with a minus sign in front so as to get the direction right. [θ is the angle between the μ and B vectors and determines whether U as a whole is positive or negative.

2. The classical and quantum-mechanical view also diverge, however. They diverge, first, because of the quantum nature of spin in quantum mechanics. Indeed, while the angular momentum can take on any value in classical mechanics, that’s not the case in quantum mechanics: in whatever direction we measure, we get a discrete set of values only. For example, the angular momentum of a proton or an electron is either −ħ/2 or +ħ/2, in whatever direction we measure it. Therefore, they are referred to as spin-1/2 particles. All elementary fermions, i.e. the particles that constitute matter (as opposed to force-carrying particles, like photons), have spin 1/2.

Note: Spin-1/2 particles include, remarkably enough, neutrons too, which has the same kind of magnetic moment that a rotating negative charge would have. The neutron, in other words, is not exactly ‘neutral’ in the magnetic sense. One can explain this by noting that a neutron is not ‘elementary’, really: it consists of three quarks, just like a proton, and, therefore, it may help you to imagine that the electric charges inside are, somehow, distributed unevenly—although physicists hate such simplifications. I am noting this because the famous Stern-Gerlach experiment, which established the quantum nature of particle spin, used silver atoms, rather than protons or electrons. More in general, we’ll tend to forget about the electric charge of the particles we’re describing, assuming, most of the time, or tacitly, that they’re neutral—which helps us to sort of forget about classical theory when doing quantum-mechanical calculations!

3. The quantum nature of spin is related to another crucial difference between the classical and quantum-mechanical view of the angular momentum and the magnetic moment of a particle. Classically, the angular momentum and the magnetic moment can have any direction.

Note: I should probably briefly remind you that J is a so-called axial vector, i.e. a vector product (as opposed to a scalar product) of the radius vector r and the (linear) momentum vector p = m·v, with v the velocity vector, which points in the direction of motion. So we write: J = r×p = r×m·v = |r|·|p|·sinθ·n. The n vector is the unit vector perpendicular to the plane containing r and (and, hence, v, of course) given by the right-hand rule. I am saying this to remind you that the direction of the magnetic moment and the direction of motion are not the same: the simple illustration below may help to see what I am talking about.]

Back to quantum mechanics: the image above doesn’t work in quantum mechanics. We do not have an unambiguous direction of the angular momentum and, hence, of the magnetic moment. That’s where all of the weirdness of the quantum-mechanical concept of spin comes out, really. I’ll talk about that when discussing Feynman’s ‘filters’ – which I’ll do in a moment – but here I just want to remind you of the mathematical argument that I presented in the above-mentioned post. Just like in classical mechanics, we’ll have a maximum (and, hence, also a minimum) value for J, like +ħ, 0 and +ħ for a Lithium-6 nucleus. [I am just giving this rather special example of a spin-1 article so you’re reminded we can have particles with an integer spin number too!] So, when we measure its angular momentum in any direction really, it will take on one of these three values: +ħ, 0 or +ħ. So it’s either/or—nothing in-between. Now that leads to a funny mathematical situation: one would usually equate the maximum value of a quantity like this to the magnitude of the vector, which is equal to the (positive) square root of J2 = J= Jx2 + Jy2 + Jz2, with Jx, Jy and Jz the components of J in the x-, y- and z-direction respectively. But we don’t have continuity in quantum mechanics, and so the concept of a component of a vector needs to be carefully interpreted. There’s nothing definite there, like in classical mechanics: all we have is amplitudes, and all we can do is calculate probabilities, or expected values based on those amplitudes.

Huh? Yes. In fact, the concept of the magnitude of a vector itself becomes rather fuzzy: all we can do really is calculate its expected value. Think of it: in the classical world, we have a J2 = Jproduct that’s independent of the direction of J. For example, if J is all in the x-direction, then Jand Jwill be zero, and J2 = Jx2. If it’s all in the y-direction, then Jand Jwill be zero and all of the magnitude of J will be in the y-direction only, so we write: J2 = Jy2. Likewise, if J does not have any z-component, then our JJ product will only include the x- and y-components: JJ = Jx2 + Jy2. You get the idea: the J2 = Jproduct is independent of the direction of J exactly because, in classical mechanics, J actually has a precise and unambiguous magnitude and direction and, therefore, actually has a precise and unambiguous component in each direction. So we’d measure Jx, Jy, and Jand, regardless of the actual direction of J, we’d find its magnitude |J| = J = +√J2 = +(Jx2 + Jy2 + Jz2)1/2.

In quantum mechanics, we just don’t have quantities like that. We say that Jx, Jand Jhave an amplitude to take on a value that’s equal to +ħ, 0 or +ħ (or whatever other value is allowed by the spin number of the system). Now that we’re talking spin numbers, please note that this characteristic number is usually denoted by j, which is a bit confusing, but so be it. So can be 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, etcetera, and the number of ‘permitted values’ is 2j + 1 values, with each value being separated by an amount equal to ħ. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etcetera possible values for Jx, Jand Jrespectively. But let me get back to the lesson. We just can’t do the same thing in quantum mechanics. For starters, we can’t measure Jx, Jy, and Jsimultaneously: our Stern-Gerlach apparatus has a certain orientation and, hence, measures one component of J only. So what can we do?

Frankly, we can only do some math here. The wave-mechanical approach does allow to think of the expected value of J2 = J= Jx2 + Jy2 + Jz2 value, so we write:

E[J2] = E[JJ] = E[Jx2 + Jy2 + Jz2] = ?

[Feynman’s use of the 〈 and 〉 brackets to denote an expected value is hugely confusing, because these brackets are also used to denote an amplitude. So I’d rather use the more commonly used E[X] notation.] Now, it is a rather remarkable property, but the expected value of the sum of two or more random variables is equal to the sum of the expected values of the variables, even if those variables may not be independent. So we can confidently use the linearity property of the expected value operator and write:

E[Jx+ Jy2 + Jz2] = E[Jx2] + E[Jx2] + E[Jx2]

Now we need something else. It’s also just part of the quantum-mechanical approach to things and so you’ll just have to accept it. It sounds rather obvious but it’s actually quite deep: if we measure the x-, y- or z-component of the angular momentum of a random particle, then each of the possible values is equally likely to occur. So that means, in our case, that the +ħ, 0 or +ħ values are equally likely, so their likelihood is one into three, i.e. 1/3. Again, that sounds obvious but it’s not. Indeed, please note, once again, that we can’t measure Jx, Jy, and Jsimultaneously, so the ‘or’ in x-, y- or z-component is an exclusive ‘or’. Of course, I must add this equipartition of likelihoods is valid only because we do not have a preferred direction for J: the particles in our beam have random ‘orientations’. Let me give you the lingo for this: we’re looking at an unpolarized beam. You’ll say: so what? Well… Again, think about what we’re doing here: we may of may not assume that the Jx, Jy, and Jvariables are related. In fact, in classical mechanics, they surely are: they’re determined by the magnitude and direction of J. Hence, they are not random at all ! But let me continue, so you see what comes out.

Because the +ħ, 0 and +ħ values are equally, we can write: E[Jx2] = ħ2/3 + 0/3 + (−ħ)2/3 = [ħ2 + 0 + (−ħ)2]/3 = 2ħ2/3. In case you wonder, that’s just the definition of the expected value operator: E[X] = p1x+ p2x+ … = ∑pixi, with pi the likelihood of the possible value x. So we take a weighted average with the respective probabilities as the weights. However, in this case, with an unpolarized beam, the weighted average becomes a simple average.

Now, E[Jy2] and E[Jz2] are – rather unsurprisingly – also equal to 2ħ2/3, so we find that E[J2] = E[Jx2] + E[Jx2] + E[Jx2] = 3·(2ħ2/3) = 2ħand, therefore, we’d say that the magnitude of the angular momentum is equal to |J| = J = +√2·ħ ≈ 1.414·ħ. Now that value is not equal to the maximum value of our x-, y-, z-component of J, or the component of J in whatever direction we’d want to measure it. That maximum value is ħ, without the √2 factor, so that’s some 40% less than the magnitude we’ve just calculated!

Now, you’ve probably fallen asleep by now but, what this actually says, is that the angular momentum, in quantum mechanics, is never completely in any direction. We can state this in another way: it implies that, in quantum mechanics, there’s no such thing really as a ‘definite’ direction of the angular momentum.

[…]

OK. Enough on this. Let’s move on to a more ‘real’ example. Before I continue though, let me generalize the results above:

[I] A particle, or a system, will have a characteristic spin number: j. That number is always an integer or a half-integer, and it determines a discrete set of possible values for the component of the angular momentum J in any direction.

[II] The number of values is equal to 2j + 1, and these values are separated by ħ, which is why they are usually measured in units of ħ, i.e. Planck’s reduced constant: ħ ≈ 1×10−34 J·s, so that’s tiny but real. 🙂 [It’s always good to remind oneself that we’re actually trying to describe reality.] For example, the permitted values for a spin-3/2 particle are +3ħ/2, +ħ/2, −ħ/2 and −3ħ/2 or, measured in units of ħ, +3/2, +1/2, −1/2 and −3/2. When discussing spin-1/2 particles, we’ll often refer to the two possible states as the ‘up’ and the ‘down’ state respectively. For example, we may write the amplitude for an electron or a proton to have a angular momentum in the x-direction equal to +ħ/2 or −ħ/2 as 〈+x〉 and 〈−x〉 respectively. [Don’t worry too much about it right now: you’ll get used to the notation quickly.]

[III] The classical concepts of angular momentum, and the related magnetic moment, have their limits in quantum mechanics. The magnitude of a vector quantity like angular momentum is generally not equal to the maximum value of the component of that quantity in any direction. The general rule is:

J= j·(j+1)ħ2 > j2·ħ2

So the maximum value of any component of J in whatever direction (i.e. j·ħ) is smaller than the magnitude of J (i.e. √[ j·(j+1)]·ħ). This implies we cannot associate any precise and unambiguous direction with quantities like the angular momentum J or the magnetic moment μ. As Feynman puts it:

“That the energy of an atom [or a particle] in a magnetic field can have only certain discrete energies is really not more surprising than the fact that atoms in general have only certain discrete energy levels—something we mentioned often in Volume I. Why should the same thing not hold for atoms in a magnetic field? It does. But it is the attempt to correlate this with the idea of an oriented magnetic moment that brings out some of the strange implications of quantum mechanics.”

#### A real example: the disintegration of a muon in a magnetic field

I talked about muon integration before, when writing a much more philosophical piece on symmetries in Nature and time reversal in particular. I used the illustration below. We’ve got an incoming muon that’s being brought to rest in a block of material, and then, as muons do, it disintegrates, emitting an electron and two neutrinos. As you can see, the decay direction is (mostly) in the direction of the axial vector that’s associated with the spin direction, i.e. the direction of the grey dashed line. However, there’s some angular distribution of the decay direction, as illustrated by the blue arrows, that are supposed to visualize the decay products, i.e. the electron and the neutrinos.

This disintegration process is very interesting from a more philosophical side. The axial vector isn’t ‘real’: it’s a mathematical concept—a pseudovector. A pseudo- or axial vector is the product of two so-called true vectors, aka as polar vectors. Just look back at what I wrote about the angular momentum: the J in the J = r×p = r×m·v formula is such vector, and its direction depends on the spin direction, which is clockwise or counter-clockwise, depending from what side you’re looking at it. Having said that, who’s to judge if the product of two ‘true’ vectors is any less ‘true’ than the vectors themselves? 🙂

The point is: the disintegration process does not respect what is referred to as P-symmetry. That’s because our mathematical conventions (like all of these right-hand rules that we’ve introduced) are unambiguous, and they tell us that the pseudovector in the mirror image of what’s going on, has the opposite direction. It has to, as per our definition of a vector product. Hence, our fictitious muon in the mirror should send its decay products in the opposite direction too! So… Well… The mirror image of our muon decay process is actually something that’s not going to happen: it’s physically impossible. So we’ve got a process in Nature here that doesn’t respect ‘mirror’ symmetry. Physicists prefer to call it ‘P-symmetry’, for parity symmetry, because it involves a flip of sign of all space coordinates, so there’s a parity inversion indeed. So there’s processes in Nature that don’t respect it but, while that’s all very interesting, it’s not what I want to write about. [Just check that post of mine if you’d want to read more.] Let me, therefore, use another illustration—one that’s more to the point in terms of what we do want to talk about here:

So we’ve got the same muon here – well… A different one, of course! 🙂 – entering that block (A) and coming to a grinding halt somewhere in the middle, and then it disintegrates in a few micro-seconds, which is an eternity at the atomic or sub-atomic scale. It disintegrates into an electron and two neutrinos, as mentioned above, with some spread in the decay direction. [In case you wonder where we can find muons… Well… I’ll let you look it up yourself.] So we have:

Now it turns out that the presence of a magnetic field (represented by the B arrows in the illustration above) can drastically change the angular distribution of decay directions. That shouldn’t surprise us, of course, but how does it work, exactly? Well… To simplify the analysis, we’ve got a polarized beam here: the spin direction of all muons before they enter the block and/or the magnetic field, i.e. at time t = 0, is in the +x-direction. So we filtered them just, before they entered the block. [I will come back to this ‘filtering’ process.] Now, if the muon’s spin would stay that way, then the decay products – and the electron in particular – would just go straight, because all of the angular momentum is in that direction. However, we’re in the quantum-mechanical world here, and so things don’t stay the same. In fact, as we explained, there’s no such things as a definite angular momentum: there’s just an amplitude to be in the +x state, and that amplitude changes in time and in space.

How exactly? Well… We don’t know, but we can apply some clever tricks here. The first thing to note is that our magnetic field will add to the energy of our muon. So, as I explained in my previous post, the magnetic field adds to the E in the exponent of our complex-valued wavefunction a·e(i/ħ)(E·t − px). In our example, we’ve got a magnetic field in the z-direction only, so that U = −μB reduces to U = −μz·B, and we can re-write our wavefunction as:

a·e(i/ħ)[(E+U)·t − px] = a·e(i/ħ)(E·t − px)·e(i/ħ)(μz·B·t)

Of course, the magnetic field only acts from t = 0 to when the muon disintegrates, which we’ll denote by the point t = τ. So what we get is that the probability amplitude of a particle that’s been in a uniform magnetic field changes by a factor e(i/ħ)(μz·B·τ). Note that it’s a factor indeed: we use it to multiply. You should also note that this is a complex exponential, so it’s a periodic function, with its real and imaginary part oscillating between zero and one. Finally, we know that μz can take on only certain values: for a spin-1/2 particle, they are plus or minus some number, which we’ll simply denote as μ, so that’s without the subscript, so our factor becomes:

e(i/ħ)(±μ·B·t)

[The plus or minus sign needs to be explained here, so let’s do that quickly: we have two possible states for a spin-1/2 particle, one ‘up’, and the other ‘down’. But then we also know that the phase of our complex-valued wave function turns clockwise, which is why we have a minus sign in the exponent of our eiθ expression. In short, for the ‘up’ state, we should take the positive value, i.e. +μ, but the minus sign in the exponent of our eiθ function makes it negative again, so our factor is e−(i/ħ)(μ·B·t) for the ‘up’ state, and e+(i/ħ)(μ·B·t) for the ‘down’ state.]

OK. We get that, but that doesn’t get us anywhere—yet. We need another trick first. One of the most fundamental rules in quantum-mechanics is that we can always calculate the amplitude to go from one state, say φ (read: ‘phi’), to another, say χ (read: ‘khi’), if we have a complete set of so-called base states, which we’ll denote by the index i or j (which you shouldn’t confuse with the imaginary unit, of course), using the following formula:

〈 χ | φ 〉 = ∑ 〈 χ | i 〉〈 i | φ 〉

I know this is a lot to swallow, so let me start with the notation. You should read 〈 χ | φ 〉 from right to left: it’s the amplitude to go from state φ to state χ. This notation is referred to as the bra-ket notation, or the Dirac notation. [Dirac notation sounds more scientific, doesn’t it?] The right part, i.e. | φ 〉, is the bra, and the left part, i.e. 〈 χ | is the ket. In our example, we wonder what the amplitude is for our muon staying in the +x state. Because that amplitude is time-dependent, we can write it as A+(τ) = 〈 +at time t = τ | +at time t = 0 〉 = 〈 +at t = τ | +at t = 0 〉or, using a very misleading shorthand, 〈 +x | +x 〉. [The shorthand is misleading because the +in the ket obviously means something else than the +in the bra.]

But let’s apply the rule. We’ve got two states with respect to each coordinate axis only here. For example, in respect to the z-axis, the spin values are +z and −z respectively. [As mentioned above, we actually mean that the angular momentum in this direction is either +ħ/2 or −ħ/2, aka as ‘up’ or ‘down’ respectively, but then quantum theorists seem to like all kinds of symbols better, so we’ll use the +z and −z notations for these two base states here. So now we can use our rule and write:

A+(t) = 〈 +x | +x 〉 = 〈 +x | +z 〉〈 +z | +x 〉 + 〈 +x | −z 〉〈 −z | +x 〉

You’ll say this doesn’t help us any further, but it does, because there is another set of rules, which are referred to as transformation rules, which gives us those 〈 +z | +x 〉 and 〈 −z | +x 〉 amplitudes. They’re real numbers, and it’s the same number for both amplitudes.

〈 +z | +x 〉 = 〈 −z | +x 〉 = 1/√2

This shouldn’t surprise you too much: the square root disappears when squaring, so we get two equal probabilities – 1/2, to be precise – that add up to one which – you guess it – they have to add up to because of the normalization rule: the sum of all probabilities has to add up to one, always. [I can feel your impatience, but just hang in here for a while, as I guide you through what is likely to be your very first quantum-mechanical calculation.] Now, the 〈 +z | +x 〉 = 〈 −z | +x 〉 = 1/√2 amplitudes are the amplitudes at time t = 0, so let’s be somewhat less sloppy with our notation and write 〈 +z | +x 〉 as C+(0) and 〈 −z | +x 〉 as C(0), so we write:

〈 +z | +x 〉 = C+(0) = 1/√2

〈 −z | +x 〉 = C(0) = 1/√2

Now we know what happens with those amplitudes over time: that e(i/ħ)(±μ·B·t) factor kicks in, and so we have:

C+(t) = C+(0)·e−(i/ħ)(μ·B·t) = e−(i/ħ)(μ·B·t)/√2

C(t) = C(0)·e+(i/ħ)(μ·B·t) = e+(i/ħ)(μ·B·t)/√2

As for the plus and minus signs, see my remark on the tricky ± business in regard to μ. To make a long story somewhat shorter :-), our expression for A+(t) = 〈 +x at t | +x 〉 now becomes:

A+(t) = 〈 +x | +z 〉·C+(t) + 〈 +x | −z 〉·C(t)

Now, you wouldn’t be too surprised if I’d just tell you that the 〈 +x | +z 〉 and 〈 +x | −z 〉 amplitudes are also real-valued and equal to 1/√2, but you can actually use yet another rule we’ll generalize shortly: the amplitude to go from state φ to state χ is the complex conjugate of the amplitude to to go from state χ to state φ, so we write 〈 χ | φ 〉 = 〈 φ | χ 〉*, and therefore:

〈 +x | +z 〉 = 〈 +z | +x 〉* = (1/√2)* = (1/√2)

〈 +x | −z 〉 = 〈 −z | +x 〉* = (1/√2)* = (1/√2)

So our expression for A+(t) = 〈 +x at t | +x 〉 now becomes:

A+(t) = e−(i/ħ)(μ·B·t)/2 + e(i/ħ)(μ·B·t)/2

That’s the sum of a complex-valued function and its complex conjugate, and we’ve shown more than once (see my page on the essentials, for example) that such sum reduces to the sum of the real parts of the complex exponentials. [You should not expect any explanation of Euler’s eiθ = cosθ + i·sinθ rule at this level of understanding.] In short, we get the following grand result:

The big question, of course: what does this actually mean? 🙂 Well… Just square this thing and you get the probabilities shown below. [Note that the period of a squared cosine function is π, instead of 2π, which you can easily verify using an online graphing tool.]

Because you’re tired of this business, you probably don’t realize what we’ve just done. It’s spectacular and mundane at the same time. Let me quote Feynman to summarize the results:

“We find that the chance of catching the decay electron in the electron counter varies periodically with the length of time the muon has been sitting in the magnetic field. The frequency depends on the magnetic moment μ. The magnetic moment of the muon has, in fact, been measured in just this way.”

As far as I am concerned, the key result is that we’ve learned how to work with those mysterious amplitudes, and the wavefunction, in a practical way, thereby using all of the theoretical rules of the quantum-mechanical approach to real-life physical situations. I think that’s a great leap forward, and we’ll re-visit those rules in a more theoretical and philosophical démarche in the next post. As for the example itself, Feynman takes it much further, but I’ll just copy the Grand Master here:

Huh? Well… I am afraid I have to leave it at this, as I discussed the precession of ‘atomic’ magnets elsewhere (see my post on precession and diamagnetism), which gives you the same formula: ω= μ·B/J (just substitute J for ±ħ/2). However, the derivation above approaches it from an entirely different angle, which is interesting. Of course, all fits. 🙂 However, I’ll let you do your own homework now. I hope to see you tomorrow for the mentioned theoretical discussion. Have a nice evening, or weekend – or whatever ! 🙂

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