Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-1/a1/a/i/solution

Take with real , and . The operator domain matters: use sufficiently smooth wavefunctions for which the following boundary terms vanish at both infinities. A real multiplication operator gives
Two applications of integration by parts give
Thus the potential energy and kinetic energy operators obey the stated Hermitian operator identity on this common domain. For , one application of integration by parts instead gives
The derivative is anti-Hermitian, rather than Hermitian; the minus sign cannot generally be removed. Multiplication by makes the corresponding momentum operator Hermitian. These integrations establish the requested symmetry identities; full self-adjointness of an unbounded operator additionally requires equality of its domain with its adjoint's domain.

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