- #1
Kirjava
- 27
- 1
Hey folks,
I'm reading a paper by T.F. Jordan which was referenced in chapter 3 of Ballentine. He's introducing the Galilei group commutation relations, and I'm having trouble with one of them in particular.
He states that in the Heisenberg picture, time dependent position operators can be represented as [tex] $ Q(t) = e^{itH}Qe^{-itH}$ [/tex]. Fine. Then the generators for the transformation [tex]$ x \rightarrow x + vt$ [/tex] are required to give: [tex] $ e^{iv \cdot G}Qe^{-iv \cdot G} = Q(t) + vt [/tex]. I don't see how this could be possible short of requiring that the generators be time dependent (since otherwise we have time independence on the left, and manifest dependence on the right). If so, his next step doesn't seem to follow, because he takes the particular case t=0: [tex] e^{iv \cdot G}Qe^{-iv \cdot G} = Q [/tex] to deduce that G commutes with Q. Surely this should only read G(0) commutes with Q. Somehow I think that if this were true he would take the care to mention it. Am I mixed up or what?
tl;dr: Are the generators of Galilean boosts time dependent operators?
Something else that's been on my mind: Why do we need boost transformations in the first place? Can't we model relative velocity by a time dependent spatial translation? i.e. why isn't the unitary transformation [tex] e^{-iv \cdot G} [/tex] taken to be the same as [tex] e^{-ix \cdot Pt} [/tex]?
I'm reading a paper by T.F. Jordan which was referenced in chapter 3 of Ballentine. He's introducing the Galilei group commutation relations, and I'm having trouble with one of them in particular.
He states that in the Heisenberg picture, time dependent position operators can be represented as [tex] $ Q(t) = e^{itH}Qe^{-itH}$ [/tex]. Fine. Then the generators for the transformation [tex]$ x \rightarrow x + vt$ [/tex] are required to give: [tex] $ e^{iv \cdot G}Qe^{-iv \cdot G} = Q(t) + vt [/tex]. I don't see how this could be possible short of requiring that the generators be time dependent (since otherwise we have time independence on the left, and manifest dependence on the right). If so, his next step doesn't seem to follow, because he takes the particular case t=0: [tex] e^{iv \cdot G}Qe^{-iv \cdot G} = Q [/tex] to deduce that G commutes with Q. Surely this should only read G(0) commutes with Q. Somehow I think that if this were true he would take the care to mention it. Am I mixed up or what?
tl;dr: Are the generators of Galilean boosts time dependent operators?
Something else that's been on my mind: Why do we need boost transformations in the first place? Can't we model relative velocity by a time dependent spatial translation? i.e. why isn't the unitary transformation [tex] e^{-iv \cdot G} [/tex] taken to be the same as [tex] e^{-ix \cdot Pt} [/tex]?
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