Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 34

Published by Werner Heisenberg in 1925-07-25 as quantum mechanical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations by Heisenberg (1925), it offered the first general formulation of quantum mechanics.

It is apparently more closely related to the ladder operator method, which is a more algebraic than the more analytical Schrödinger equation.

It appears that this formulation makes the importance of the Poisson bracket clear, and explains why physicists are so obsessed with talking about position and momentum space. This point of view also apparently makes it clearer that quantum mechanics can be seen as a generalization of classical mechanics through the Hamiltonian.

QED and the men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga by Silvan Schweber (1994) mentions however that relativistic quantum mechanics broke that analogy, because some 2x2 matrix had a different form, TODO find that again.

Inward Bound by Abraham Pais (1988) chapter 12 "Quantum mechanics, an essay" part (c) "A chronology" has some ultra brief, but worthwhile mentions of matrix mechanics and the commutator.

One of the main reasons why physicists are obsessed by this topic is that position and momentum are mapped to the phase space coordinates of Hamiltonian mechanics, which appear in the matrix mechanics formulation of quantum mechanics, which offers insight into the theory, particularly when generalizing to relativistic quantum mechanics.

One way to think is: what is the definition of space space? It is a way to write the wave function ${\psi }_x(x)$ such that:And then, what is the definition of momentum space? It is of course a way to write the wave function ${\psi }_p(p)$ such that:

physics.stackexchange.com/questions/39442/intuitive-explanation-of-why-momentum-is-the-fourier-transform-variable-of-posit/39508#39508 gives the best idea intuitive idea: the Fourier transform writes a function as a (continuous) sum of plane waves, and each plane wave has a fixed momentum.

Bibliography:

Quantum mechanics is quite a broad term. Perhaps it is best to start approaching it from the division into:

Key experiments that could not work without quantum mechanics: Section "Quantum mechanics experiment".

Mathematics: there are a few models of increasing precision which could all be called "quantum mechanics":

Ciro Santilli feels that the largest technological revolutions since the 1950's have been quantum related, and will continue to be for a while, from deeper understanding of chemistry and materials to quantum computing, understanding and controlling quantum systems is where the most interesting frontier of technology lies.

Second quantization also appears to be useful not only for relativistic quantum mechanics, but also for condensed matter physics. The reason is that the basis idea is to use the number occupation basis. This basis is:

Bibliography:

I like relativistic quantum mechanics.

Best mathematical explanation: Section "Spin comes naturally when adding relativity to quantum mechanics".

Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) chapter 3.9 "Elementary particles" has an amazing summary of the preceding chapters the spin value has a relation to the representations of the Lorentz group, which encodes the spacetime symmetry that each particle observes. These symmetries can be characterized by small integer numbers:

Bibliography: