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Concept
Hamiltonian (quantum mechanics)
Summary
In quantum mechanics, the Hamiltonian of a system is an operator corresponding to the total energy of that system, including both kinetic energy and potential energy. Its spectrum, the system's energy spectrum or its set of energy eigenvalues, is the set of possible outcomes obtainable from a measurement of the system's total energy. Due to its close relation to the energy spectrum and time-evolution of a system, it is of fundamental importance in most formulations of quantum theory.
The Hamiltonian is named after William Rowan Hamilton, who developed a revolutionary reformulation of Newtonian mechanics, known as Hamiltonian mechanics, which was historically important to the development of quantum physics. Similar to vector notation, it is typically denoted by , where the hat indicates that it is an operator. It can also be written as or .
Operator (physics)#Operators in quantum mechanics
The Hamiltonian of a system represents the total energy of the system; that is, the sum of the kinetic and potential energies of all particles associated with the system. The Hamiltonian takes different forms and can be simplified in some cases by taking into account the concrete characteristics of the system under analysis, such as single or several particles in the system, interaction between particles, kind of potential energy, time varying potential or time independent one.
By analogy with classical mechanics, the Hamiltonian is commonly expressed as the sum of operators corresponding to the kinetic and potential energies of a system in the form
where
is the potential energy operator and
is the kinetic energy operator in which is the mass of the particle, the dot denotes the dot product of vectors, and
is the momentum operator where a is the del operator. The dot product of with itself is the Laplacian . In three dimensions using Cartesian coordinates the Laplace operator is
Although this is not the technical definition of the Hamiltonian in classical mechanics, it is the form it most commonly takes.
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