Semispecula lecture PDF – H of Quantum: Hamiltonian Operator with Expectation

Value and Time Evolution.

H OF QUANTUM:
HAMILTONIAN OPERATOR WITH
EXPECTATION VALUE AND TIME
EVOLUTION

Chapter I – Expectation Value.

What is 6? It is a number, so as π, so as 187 and so as 𝑒. We call these

entities numbers.

Now what is 𝑓(𝑥) = 𝑥 + 2? This would be a function, same as 𝑒𝑥 and

more.

Now, what is 𝑑/𝑑𝑥? We all know d/dx as the derivative. What is a

derivative? It is certainly not a number, and it is not a function either.

It is an operator. 𝑑/𝑑𝑥 is a spatial derivative operator. So, when the

Hamiltonian is introduced, we should know that it is an operator,
indicated with an H symbol with a hat.

Just like 𝑑/𝑑𝑥 being a spatial derivative operator, Hamiltonian is an

operator for energy of a certain system. Not simply energy, the total
energy of a system.

In quantum mechanics, we define the Hamiltonian as

Hence with this definition, we can rewrite the Schrödinger equation as

simply as

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Semispecula lecture PDF – H of Quantum: Hamiltonian Operator with Expectation
Value and Time Evolution.

𝐻̂ ψ(𝑟) = 𝐸ψ(𝑟)
This form is way more compact and easier to write. This is the time
independent equation of course; we see no time variance here. For time
dependent equation, we can rewrite as:

Again, to remark an important fact; this entity 𝐻̂ is not a number, not a

function, it is an operator. An operator will turn one function into
another one.

Why would we use a Hamiltonian operator in quantum mechanics other

than to write the Schrödinger equation more compactly?

This part is going to be a bit technical and will utilize many concepts
from quantum mechanics. Let us look at the following integral,

Why this certain integral is important will become clearer in a bit.

Where Ψ(𝒓, 𝑡) is a wave function of a system of interest. We will expand
Ψ(𝒓, 𝑡) to normalized energy eigenstates ψ𝑛 (𝑛) by using Fourier analysis
as

So, we deduce,

and this will be equivalent to

And so, our complete integral is

Because of orthonormality of the basis functions ψ𝑛 (𝑟), only terms

surviving the double summation are the ones which are 𝑛 = 𝑚, so we
conclude

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Semispecula lecture PDF – H of Quantum: Hamiltonian Operator with Expectation
Value and Time Evolution.

We can see that this is actually the formula for our expectation value,
which we denote as < 𝐸 >, however we already have a formula to
calculate an expectation value.

Why would we need another formula for the expectation value? It is so

because we don’t even have to solve for eigenfunctions of the operator to
get the result. It is a trick that we use.

Chapter II – Time Evolution.

Hamiltonian is very useful to see what will happen in the future. Taking
the time dependent Schrödinger equation and rewriting it from

To the following expression,

Hence with this in our minds, presuming 𝐻̂ does not depend on time, we
would be able to write the following expression?

If 𝐻̂ was replaced by a number, we could perform an integration of

In order to get,

If with some careful definition, it was allowed to do this, then we would

have an operator that gives us the state at time 𝑡1 directly from 𝑡0 .
Consequently, we have an operator to tell us how this system would

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Semispecula lecture PDF – H of Quantum: Hamiltonian Operator with Expectation
Value and Time Evolution.

evolve. This is a very important tool in quantum mechanics. As 𝐻̂ is a

“linear” operator, with properties of linearity,

this is so for any linear operator. As this property works with any wave
function,

A quick question, what would an operator raised to a power mean? How

would we understand it? Let’s think about it. 𝐻̂ ^2 might be thought as
𝐻̂ 𝐻̂ however we need a better understanding than that if we want to put
imaginary powers, or irrational ones.

Then for ψ𝑛 (𝑟),

which is equal to:

Hence, we can deduce:

So now we have a definition:

Now let us look at the time evolution of a certain time dependent wave
function between 𝑡0 and 𝑡1 .

Suppose the wavefunction that we have is time independent, so we signify

that as 𝜓(𝑟) at 𝑡0 , which we expand in terms of energy eigenfunctions
𝜓𝑛 (𝑟) as:

Once we multiply by the complex exponential factors of the time

dependent for each basis function, we get

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Semispecula lecture PDF – H of Quantum: Hamiltonian Operator with Expectation
Value and Time Evolution.

We must think of this factor as given. Upcoming lecture videos will

improvise upon how we end up with this factor. For now, the assumption
that this factor turns a time independent wavefunction into a time
dependent one is sufficient. So, for the expression of our time dependence
factor, which is raised over e, we can take the Taylor Series of it and
expand it as,

In this expansion, from our previous knowledge where

We rewrite the whole expression as

Because 𝐻̂ and all its powers commute with scalar quantities,

Which basically is

As we have did a Taylor series expansion to

We were able to rewrite the expression

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Semispecula lecture PDF – H of Quantum: Hamiltonian Operator with Expectation
Value and Time Evolution.

Hence, we have found that for a given quantum mechanical wavefunction

at time 0, we have a well-defined operator that will tell us about the state
at time 1, it is the time evolution operator.

Qed.