Saturday, December 30, 2017

quantum mechanics - How to write "postselection" operator?


Suppose, I wish to know an operator, which eigenvalue is 1 if state is exactly F and 0 otherwise. I.e. this operator should select some desired state.


Which is this operator?


One of it's eigenfunctions is F, but what one is another?



Answer



All other functions not containing a non-zero factor of $F$ are eigenfunctions with eigenvalue $0$ of this operator, the eigenspace with that value is degenerate with dimension $\mathrm{dim}(\mathcal{H}) - 1$, where $\mathcal{H}$ is the whole space.



Obviously, the operator is simply the projection on $\lvert F \rangle$, so it is $P_F = \lvert F \rangle \langle F \rvert$.


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