PHY 211: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Varsha 2009

Lecture 1
Anil Shaji
School of Physics, IISER TVM
The state vector, Quantum kinematics versus classical kinematics, The Dirac Bra and Ket
notation, The principle of superposition

Five blind men went to see an Elephant!

The one that caught the Elephants tail remarked, Oh the elephant is just like a rope. The
fellow that bumped right into the beast cried out, The elephant is a wall. The third man tripped
and fell on his way and grabbed one of the elephants legs on his way down saying I know now
what an elephant it. It is nothing but a pillar alive. One poor man chanced upon the Elephants
tusk was sure that the Elephant is like a long spear and made his convictions known to the rest.
The last one did not agree with his companions and he protested with the trunk in his hands, The
Elephant is a living being and it is just like a snake
The program of quantum mechanics has parallels with this story because one is trying to make
sense of the nature and behavior of objects that are much smaller than those that we can directly
perceive through our senses. To appreciate how hard this is, think of the difficulty in inserting a
key into a lock in the dark. Simply taking away our vision makes it much harder to understand
the nature of the lock and the location of the key hole. Now imagine how much harder it must
be to figure out the nature of something that is not directly accessible to any of our senses. Since
we are dealing with physical systems beyond the realm of our direct perception we must, at the
outset, abandon all our prejudices and expectations regarding quantum objects. Specifically, one

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cannot expect the familiar laws of classical mechanics and our intuition regarding them to carry
over to the quantum regime. In fact quantum mechanics was invented just because classical laws
and classical intuition could not explain certain basic things like why the atoms that make up our
world are stable objects that does not quickly disintegrate into a collection of electrons and protons
and other smaller objects.
Not only do we have to learn the laws of nature that are applicable in the quantum realm, we
also have to learn the mathematical tools that let us describe quantitatively quantum phenomena
and that gives us predictive power over objects so far removed from our senses. Some of these tools
are going to be rather sophisticated and the going might get tough at some points. But ultimately
our goal this semester is to learn how to do quantum mechanics. We will spend very little, if at all
any, time speculating on what all of it might mean. It is not even clear whether the question What
is the meaning of quantum mechanics? even makes sense. Feynman said I think I can safely say
that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So let us learn to calculate things using quantum
mechanics and in doing so let us develop the ability to think quantum mechanically.

I.

THE STATE VECTOR: QUANTUM AND CLASSICAL KINEMATICS

Before thinking of quantum objects let us first think of how one would provide a complete
description of a classical particle. This is the starting point of classical mechanics; what one would
call classical kinematics. The description of the particle might include a list of attributes like, for
instance,
1. Position, ~x
2. Velocity, ~v
3. Mass, m
4. Size, r
5. Angular velocity,
6. Charge, q
7. Energy, E
8. Color

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9. Surface properties and so on
Note that we have used two different kinds of mathematical objects to describe the quantifiable
properties of the particles. We have used numbers (scalar) and vectors. As an aside, the fact that
vectors and numbers are very different mathematical objects is often not appreciated. They have,
for instance, their own independent rules for addition. The simple rule you learn in kindergarten
for adding numbers is quite distinct from the triangle law for vector addition even though one can
implement the triangle law using numbers and the component notation for vectors when using an
orthonormal set of axes.
The mathematical construct that describes a quantum system is called a state vector. Clearly
the name suggests that it is a vector but it not exactly the familiar kind of vector. It is a vector
in what is called Hilbert space. We will learn about the Hilbert space later on but now we focus
on the state vector. The state vector is denoted like so
|i
This object is often called a ket-vector. This name has its origins in the angular bracket, h i which
Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, chose to split into a ket, | i and a bra, h |
for reasons which will be clear soon.
What label does one put inside the ket? That depends on the nature of the quantum system
that we are trying to describe. In fact, in practice, it depends really on what properties of that
quantum system we are interested in. A complete description of all its properties is often not really
needed. So what is the simplest sort of property of a quantum system we can imagine? A property
that has only a single fixed value. But that is not all that exciting so let us consider a property
that can take on two values. This is very much like an electrical switch. We are typically not
interested how fast the switch is moving or what color it is or sometimes we dont even care where
it is. All we really care about is whether it is on or off. We can imagine such a quantum system.
In fact we do not have to even imagine it, because there are real physical systems of that nature
which are of interest.
Two possible states of such a system are
|offi

and |oni

Let us pretend to be more quantitative and call it

|0i

and |1i

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We can have more states for the system. Or else the property of the quantum system that we are
interested in may take on an infinity of values. But in general, we often denote the state of the
system abstractly simply as
|i
.

II.

THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERPOSITION

Let us come back to our simple two state system with states |0i and |1i. Even if we said there
are only two states, let us ask the seemingly nonsensical question; are there any more states? In
fact, it turns out that there are an infinity of other possible states for this system. Any state of
the form
|i = c1 |0i + c2 |1i,

c21 + c22 = 1

is an allowed state of the system! The particular states |0i and |1i that we labeled in the beginning
are often referred to as a basis for the space of all possible states of the system.
Let us think for a moment what this means in relation to our analogy with an electrical switch.
We are saying here that the switch can either be off, on or anything in between. To take a different
analogy, we know that a classical particle can be either at location x1 or at at location x2 . But
here we are saying that a quantum particle can be at x1 , x2 or actually at both places at the same
time!
A convenient choice for c1 and c2 that takes care of the condition that the sum of their squares
has to be 1 is c1 = cos and c2 = sin . So we can write all possible states of our quantum switch
to be
|i = cos |0i + sin |1i
The statement that any state |i =

i ci |i i

with

P 2
i ci = 1 is an allowed state of a quantum

system if the states |i i are allowed is called the principle of superposition. The condition that
P 2
i ci = 1 is called the normalization condition on the state vector and we will discover what the

normalization condition is saying at a later point.

An immediate consequence of the principle of superposition is that quantum mechanics has to
be a linear theory. This means that if one writes down a rule describing how the state of a quantum

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system is changed either in time or due to some external influence then that rule better be such
that the state |i given above better be transformed to
|i |0 i =

ci |i0 i,

when

|i i |i0 i

compare this with the definition of a linear function f as one for which
f (x + y) = f (x) + f (y)