- #1
fluidistic
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I'm new to QM, but I've had a linear algebra course before. However I've never dealt with vector spaces having infinite dimension (as far as I remember).
My QM professor said "the eigenvalues of the position operator don't exist". I've googled "eigenvalues of position operator", checked into wikipedia's and wolfram's pages but they seem to only talk briefly on eigenfunctions of that operator.
I understand that the basis of the vector space spanned by all possible wave functions ##\Psi##'s has infinite dimension so I expect that if I want to write the position operator ##\hat x## under matrix form, it would be an infinite matrix. But I don't think this implies that the eigenvalues don't exist (I guess they are infinite?).
Why are the eigenvalues non existing and what does that mean exactly?
Thanks...
My QM professor said "the eigenvalues of the position operator don't exist". I've googled "eigenvalues of position operator", checked into wikipedia's and wolfram's pages but they seem to only talk briefly on eigenfunctions of that operator.
I understand that the basis of the vector space spanned by all possible wave functions ##\Psi##'s has infinite dimension so I expect that if I want to write the position operator ##\hat x## under matrix form, it would be an infinite matrix. But I don't think this implies that the eigenvalues don't exist (I guess they are infinite?).
Why are the eigenvalues non existing and what does that mean exactly?
Thanks...