# Tag Info

2

You want to compute the integral $Z = \int d [A] e^{iS}$ and since it has a gauge symmetry, there are multiple values of $A$ that generating the same Action $S$, since $S(A_g)=S(A_{g'})$ for the two different choices of gauge $g,g'$. Now you have a gauge-fixing condition like $\partial^\mu A_\mu = 0$. The integral which contains enough physical ...

2

Comments to the question (v2): A field $\phi^{\alpha}:[t_i,t_f]\times \mathbb{R}^3\to \mathbb{R}$ is the field-theoretic version of a (generalized) position variable $q^i:[t_i,t_f]\to \mathbb{R}$ in point mechanics. Note that the physical position space $\mathbb{R}^3$ typically plays very different roles in field theory and in point mechanics.$^1$ ...

1

The wave function only contains all the information about the system im so far as you consider it. Meaning each qualitatively different physical system needs its a modified Hilbert space to fit what can happen with the system. In case you have something like spin on its own in $H_{Spin}$ and you want to look at a freely moving particle in $H_{free}$ that ...

4

The general question is quite hard to tackle I think, because a rigorous motivation of Hilbert space would end up in the theory of operator algebras (see e.g. this answer) and the OP is probably not interested in these aspects at the moment. As for the example of spin, the Hilbert space in this case is still an $L^2$ space, but the functions are no longer ...

Top 50 recent answers are included