Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-theoretical-physics-major-option-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/6/g/solution

For a free real scalar field in four spacetime dimensions, and . Canonical quantization promotes these canonical fields to Hermitian operator-valued distributions with equal-time canonical commutation relations
Expand the solution of the Klein-Gordon equation into positive- and negative-frequency modes:
Hermiticity pairs the two coefficients as adjoints. The field commutators are equivalent to
For example, inserting the expansion in yields two equal Fourier integrals, each with coefficient , and hence . The vacuum obeys , and repeated creation operators generate the symmetric bosonic Fock space. Normal ordering of the quadratic Hamiltonian removes its vacuum constant and gives ; the same computation for the spatial momentum gives the stipulated four-momentum .
The oscillator algebra now implies
Consequently
Indeed, . For , the result is , which is the Heisenberg equation of motion with the correct sign. As usual, the field identities are interpreted after smearing the operator-valued distributions, or on a suitable common finite-particle domain.

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