assignment Homework
Completeness Relations
Quantum Fundamentals 2023 (3 years)
Writing an operator in matrix notation in its own basis is easy: it is diagonal with the eigenvalues on the diagonal.
What if I want to calculate the matrix elements using a different basis??
The eigenvalue equation tells me what happens when an operator acts on its own eigenstate. For example: \(\hat{S}_y\left|{\pm}\right\rangle _y=\pm\frac{\hbar}{2}\left|{\pm}\right\rangle _y\)
In Dirac bra-ket notation, to know what an operator does to a ket, I needs to write the ket in the basis that is the eigenstates of the operator (in order to use the eigenvalue equation.)
One way to do this to stick completeness relationships into the braket:
\begin{eqnarray*}
\left\langle {+}\right|\hat{S_y}\left|{+}\right\rangle = \left\langle {+}\right|(I)\hat{S_y}(I)\left|{+}\right\rangle
\end{eqnarray*}
where \(I\) is the identity operator: \(I=\color{blue}{\left|{+}\right\rangle _{yy}\left\langle {+}\right|}\;+\;\color{blue}{\left|{-}\right\rangle _{yy}\left\langle {-}\right|}\). This effectively rewrite the \(\left|{+}\right\rangle \) in the \(\left|{\pm}\right\rangle _y\) basis.
Find the top row matrix elements of the operator \(\hat{S}_y\) in the \(S_z\) basis by inserting completeness relations into the brakets. (The answer is already on the Spins Reference Sheet, but I want you do demonstrate the calculation.)