Fock space (${\mathcal{F}}_{\pm }(H)$)

For a one-particle Hilbert space $H$, the bosonic or fermionic Fock space is ${\mathcal{F}}_{\pm }(H)={⨁}_{n=0}^{\infty }{H}^{{\otimes }_{\pm }n}$, using symmetric or antisymmetric tensor powers. Its zeroth summand is the one-dimensional vacuum sector. Creation operators and annihilation operators change particle number. The bosonic Fock space and fermionic Fock space implement the corresponding exchange statistics.

An orthonormal basis labelled by the occupations of specified single-particle modes. For one bosonic mode, $|n⟩=(a^{†}{)}^n|0⟩/\sqrt{n!}$ and the number operator has eigenvalue $n$. A coherent state's expansion in this basis gives its overlap and photon-number statistics.

A one-particle state belongs to the one-excitation sector of a Fock space. In a momentum basis with $[a_{\mathbf{p}},a_{\mathbf{q}}^{†}]=(2\pi {)}^3{\delta }^3(\mathbf{p}-\mathbf{q})$, the wavepacket $\int d^{3}pf(\mathbf{p})a_{\mathbf{p}}^{†}|0⟩/(2\pi {)}^3$ has norm squared $\int d^{3}p|f(\mathbf{p}){|}^2/(2\pi {)}^3$. Sharp-momentum states have distributional rather than unit normalization; factors of $\sqrt{2E_{\mathbf{p}}}$ convert to relativistic normalization of a one-particle state.

For a massive spin-zero one-particle state with covariant normalization and a Lorentz scalar field, Lorentz invariance makes $F=⟨\Omega |\varphi (0)|p⟩$ independent of the on-shell four-momentum within a fixed species. A Lorentz boost to the rest frame, invariance of the vacuum state and scalar transformation at the origin prove this. Translation covariance of a quantum field then supplies the plane-wave factor. With noncovariant normalization, the boost law and the displayed momentum independence acquire energy factors.

The eigenvalue of a mode number operator counts excitations in that mode. Bosonic occupation numbers range over all nonnegative integers; fermionic occupation numbers are zero or one.

For $\{f,f^{†}{\}}_{+}=1$ and $f^2=0$, the occupation number operator $f^{†}f$ has eigenvalues zero and one. This gives the single-mode exclusion principle.

For $[a,a^{†}]=1$, the occupation number operator $a^{†}a$ has eigenvalues $0,1,2,\dots$ on the bosonic oscillator Fock space.