Tuesday 2 December 2014

quantum mechanics - Prove that this operator is unitary


$$\hat{O}\equiv(1/\sqrt{2\pi})\int e^{-iNz}dz$$


$$\hat{O}^\dagger\equiv(1/\sqrt{2\pi})\int e^{iN'x}dx$$


We have the operator $\hat{O}$ and its Hermitian adjoint $\hat{O}^\dagger$, in the one dimensional space where $x$ is position. I am trying to prove that this is a unitary operator. I'm told that $N'$ does not necessarily equal $N$. So when I tried the old $\hat{O}^\dagger\hat{O}=\hat{I}$, I got:


$\hat{O}^\dagger\hat{O}=(1/2\pi)\int\int e^{i(N'-N)x}dxdx$


I did the double integral and the answer does not turn out nice. I know the periodicity of the function is $2\pi$, but I'm not sure how that helps cancel the denominator. Also confused on what I'm supposed to do with the $N$ terms.


Also tried using $\hat{O}^{-1}=\hat{O}^*$. That did not turn out well either.



How should I go about proving that $\hat{O}$ is unitary?



Answer



This is a well known definition of a delta function:


$$ \delta (x-\alpha )={\frac {1}{2\pi }}\int _{{-\infty }}^{\infty }e^{{ip(x-\alpha )}}\ dp $$


therefore:


$$\hat{O}^\dagger\hat{O}=(1/2\pi)\int\int e^{i(N'-N)x}dxdx = \int \delta(N-N') dx = 1$$ for N = N'.


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