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American Journal of Physics

Ehrenfest theorem for angular displacement

Donald H. Kobe

Published Oct 1, 1983• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Because of domain considerations for the z component of the angular momentum operator, the time rate of change of the expectation value of the angular displacement φ is not equal to the expectation value of the angular velocity operator. The angular velocity operator is the angular momentum operator divided by the moment of inertia. Ehrenfest’s theorem is obtained for the time rate of change of the expectation value of cos φ and sin φ.

DOI
10.1119/1.13383

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Because of domain considerations for the z component of the angular momentum operator, the time rate of change of the expectation value of the angular displacement φ is not equal to the expectation value of the angular velocity operator. The angular velocity operator is the angular momentum operator divided by the moment of inertia. Ehrenfest’s theorem is obtained for the time rate of change of the expectation value of cos φ and sin φ.
Ehrenfest’s theorem states that as a quantum state evolves in time, the rate of change of the expectation value of momentum is equal to the expectation value of the force. In the familiar ‘‘particle-in-a-box,’’ however, the probability of finding the particle at a wall—the only place where forces act—is zero, so at first glance it appears that the expectation value of the force should vanish for any state, which would violate Ehrenfest‘s theorem. This argument is flawed, however, since the forces at the walls of the box are infinite. We consider the box as a limit of a very deep square well and confirm that Ehrenfest’s theorem emerges safe and sound.
As in classical mechanics, rotation in quantum mechanics is a transformation which deals with angular momentum. The difference with classical mechanics comes from the fact that angular momentum is a vector operator and not a usual vector and its components do not commute. As for any transformation in quantum mechanics, to each rotation we can associate an operator which acts in state space. The expression of this operator depends on whether the rotation is passive, that is we do a rotation of the coordinate axes and the physical system is left unchanged, or active, in which case the coordinate axes are unchanged and the rotation is performed on the physical system. In the first part (Chaps. 1 and 2) of this book, details concerning both aspects are given. Following the definition of the geometrical transformation associated with the most general rotation, we give the expression of the rotation operator for specific cases. Transformation laws for scalar fields, vector fields and spinor fields are given as well as transformation laws for scalar operators, vector operators and more generally, for operators of any rank. The second part (Chaps. 3 and 4) deals with angular momentum algebra. We define the coupling coefficients of 2, 3 and 4 angular momenta as well as the recoupling coefficients. The definition of the irreductible tensor operator, which is a generalisation of scalar and vector operators, is given as well as the Wigner-Eckart theorem. The application of this theorem to more complex cases is studied.