Is it possible to calculate in a general way the commutator of an operator O which depends on some variable x and the derivative of this O with respect to x? O=O(x)[∂xO(x),O(x′)]=?
In practice I need this to calculate the commutator of the field operator of a free scalar field and any of its four derivatives: [∂μϕ(x,t),ϕ(x′,t)]
One can of course simply compute this by plugging in the field operator, but I was wondering about the general situation.
And what about the more general case of two operators, whose commutator is known? [O(x),U(x′)]=A(x,x′)[∂xO(x),U(x′)]=?
Answer
The derivative of an operator: Let X(t),R→X, where X is some normed linear space, say a Banach or Hilbert space. Then we can define the derivative in the usual way: ∂tX(t)=limδ→0X(t+δ)−X(t)δ.
In general the commutator does not vanish. Consider
X(ξ)=Ucosξ+Vsinξ⇒dXdξ=−Usinξ+Vcosξ
[X(ξ),dXdξ]=[U,V]
Then it is clear that one recovers the usual result for commuting U and V operators.
Edit: the result is correct ! Thanks to the comments.
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