Bra-ket notation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1

Bra-ket notation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bra-ket notation is the standard notation for describing quantum states in
the theory of quantum mechanics. It can also be used to denote abstract
vectors and linear functionals in pure mathematics. It is so called because the
inner product of two states is denoted by a bracket, , consisting of a
left part, , called the bra, and a right part, , called the ket. The notation
was invented by Paul Dirac, and is also known as Dirac notation.

Contents
1 Bras and kets
1.1 Most common use: Quantum mechanics
1.2 More general uses
2 Properties
3 Linear operators
4 Composite bras and kets
5 Representations in terms of bras and kets
6 The unit operator
7 Notation used by mathematicians
8 Further reading

Bras and kets

Most common use: Quantum mechanics
In quantum mechanics, the state of a physical system is identified with a unit
ray in a complex separable Hilbert space, , or, equivalently, by a point in the
projective Hilbert space of the system. Each vector in the ray is called a " ket"
and written as , which would be read as "psi ket". The ket can be viewed as
a column vector and (given a basis for the Hilbert space) written out in
components,

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when the considered Hilbert space is finite-dimensional. In infinite-

dimensional spaces there are infinitely many components (possibly even
uncountably many) and the ket may be written in function notation, for
example

Every ket has a dual bra, written as . For example, the bra
corresponding to the ket above would be the row vector

This is a continuous linear functional from H to the complex numbers ,

defined by:
for all kets
where denotes the inner product defined on the Hilbert space. Here an
advantage of the bra-ket notation becomes clear: when we drop the
parentheses (as is common with linear functionals) and melt the bars together
we get , which is common notation for an inner product in a Hilbert
space. This combination of a bra with a ket to form a complex number is
called a bra-ket or bracket.
In quantum mechanics the expression (mathematically: the coefficient
for the projection of onto ) is typically interpreted as the probability
amplitude for the state to collapse into the state
More general uses
The bra is simply the conjugate transpose (also called the Hermitian
conjugate) of the ket and vice versa. The notation is justified by the Riesz
representation theorem, which states that a Hilbert space and its dual space
are isometrically conjugate isomorphic. Thus, each bra corresponds to exactly
one ket, and vice versa. However, this is not always the case; on page 111 of
Quantum Mechanics by Cohen-Tannoudji et al. it is clarified that there is such
a relationship between bras and kets, so long as the defining functions used
are square integrable. This does not hinder quantum mechanics because all
physically realistic wave functions are square integrable and thus elements of
the Hilbert space L2, whereas sine and cosine are not in L2 and the Dirac
delta function is not even a function, but a measure.

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Bra-ket notation can be used even if the vector space is not a Hilbert space. In
any Banach space B, the vectors may be notated by kets and the continuous
linear functionals by bras. Over any vector space without topology, we may
also notate the vectors by kets and the linear functionals by bras. In these
more general contexts, the bracket does not have the meaning of an inner
product, because the Riesz representation theorem does not apply.
Properties
Because each ket is a vector in a complex Hilbert space and each bra-ket is
an inner product, it follows directly that bras and kets can be manipulated in
the following ways:
Given any bra , kets and , and complex numbers c1 and c2,
then, since bras are linear functionals,

Given any ket , bras and , and complex numbers c1 and c2,
then, by the definition of addition and scalar multiplication of linear
functionals,

Given any kets and , and complex numbers c1 and c2, from the
properties of the inner product (with c* denoting the complex conjugate
of c),
is dual to
Given any bra and ket , an axiomatic property of the inner
product gives

Linear operators
If A : H H is a linear operator, we can apply A to the ket to obtain the ket
. Linear operators are ubiquitous in the theory of quantum mechanics.

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For example, observable physical quantities are represented by self-adjoint

operators, such as energy or momentum, whereas transformative processes
are represented by unitary linear operators such as rotation or the
progression of time.
Operators can also be viewed as acting on bras from the right hand side.
Composing the bra with the operator A results in the bra , defined
as a linear functional on H by the rule
.
This expression is commonly written as

A convenient way to define linear operators on H is given by the outer

product: if is a bra and is a ket, the outer product

denotes the rank one operator that maps the ket to the ket
(where is a scalar multiplying the vector ). One of the uses of the
outer product is to construct projection operators. Given a ket of norm 1,
the orthogonal projection onto the subspace spanned by is

Just as kets and bras can be transformed into each other (making into
) the element from the dual space corresponding with is where
A† denotes the Hermitian conjugate of the operator A.
It is usually taken as a postulate or axiom of quantum mechanics, that any
operator corresponding to an observable quantity (shortly called observable)
is self-adjoint, that is, it satisfies A† = A. Then the identity

holds (for the first equality, use the scalar product's conjugate symmetry and
the conversion rule from the preceding paragraph). This implies that
expectation values of observables are real.

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Composite bras and kets

Two Hilbert spaces V and W may form a third space by a tensor
product. In quantum mechanics, this is used for describing composite systems.
If a system is composed of two subsystems described by V and W respectively,
then the Hilbert space of the entire system is the tensor product of the two
spaces. (The exception to this is if the subsystems are actually identical
particles. In that case, the situation is a little more complicated.)
If is a ket in V and is a ket in W, the tensor product of the two kets is a
ket in . This is written variously as
or or or
Representations in terms of bras and kets
In quantum mechanics, it is often convenient to work with the projections of
state vectors onto a particular basis, rather than the vectors themselves. The
reason is that the former are simply complex numbers, and can be formulated
in terms of partial differential equations (see, for example, the derivation of
the position-basis Schrödinger equation). This process is very similar to the
use of coordinate vectors in linear algebra.
For instance, the Hilbert space of a zero-spin point particle is spanned by a
position basis , where the label x extends over the set of position
vectors. Starting from any ket in this Hilbert space, we can define a
complex scalar function of x, known as a wavefunction:

It is then customary to define linear operators acting on wavefunctions in

terms of linear operators acting on kets, by

For instance, the momentum operator p has the following form:

One occasionally encounters an expression like

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This is something of an abuse of notation, though a fairly common one. The

differential operator must be understood to be an abstract operator, acting on
kets, that has the effect of differentiating wavefunctions once the expression
is projected into the position basis:

For further details, see rigged Hilbert space.

The unit operator
Consider a complete orthonormal system (basis), , for a Hilbert
space H, with respect to the norm from an inner product . From basic
functional analysis we know that any ket can be written as

with the inner product on the Hilbert space. From the commutativity of
kets with (complex) scalars now follows that

must be the unit operator, which sends each vector to itself. This can be
inserted in any expression without affecting its value, for example

where in the last identity Einstein summation convention has been used.
In quantum mechanics it often occurs that little or no information about the
inner product of two arbitrary (state) kets is present, while it is possible
to say something about the expansion coefficients and
of those vectors with respect to a chosen (orthonormalized) basis. In this case
it is particularly useful to insert the unit operator into the bracket one time or
more.

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Notation used by mathematicians

The object physicists are considering when using the "bra-ket" notation is a
Hilbert space (a complete inner product space).
Let be a Hilbert space and . What physicists would denote as is
the vector itself. That is
.
Let be the dual space of . This is the space of linear functionals on .
The isomorphism is defined by (h) = h where for all we
have
,
Where

are just different notations for expressing an inner product between two
elements in a Hilbert space (or for the first three, in any inner product space).
Notational confusion arises when identifying h and g with and
respectively. This is because of literal symbolic substitutions. Let
and . This gives

One ignores the parentheses and removes the double bars. Some properties
of this notation are convenient since we are dealing with linear operators and
composition acts like a ring multiplication.
Further reading
Feynman, Leighton and Sands (1965). The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Vol. III. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-02115-3.
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