Promote the mode expansion of a free field coefficients to annihilation operators and creation operators, replacing by . The canonical commutation relations areTogether with the normalization in part a, they give and vanishing equal-time commutators between two fields or two conjugate momenta.
Insert the mode expansion of a free field in the Hamiltonian. The spatial integral produces . The and coefficients cancel because . The remaining terms giveThis is a continuum of quantum harmonic oscillators. In a finite periodic volume , . The Fock vacuum satisfies , so its vacuum energy density isNormal ordering would subtract this constant; here it must be retained because it is the quantity being calculated.[ref]
Quantum Field Theory by David Tong. Section 2, canonical quantization of the real scalar field and its zero-point Hamiltonian
Articles by others on the same topic
There are currently no matching articles.