Prog. Theor. Phys. Vol. 125 No. 3 (2011) pp. 633-640

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Letters

Automatic Hermiticity

Keiichi Nagao^1,2,^* and Holger Bech Nielsen^2,^**

¹Faculty of Education, Ibaraki University, Mito 310-8512, Japan
²Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 17 Blegdamsvej Copenhagen φ, Denmark

(Received October 26, 2010; Revised January 26, 2011)

Abstract:

We study a diagonalizable Hamiltonian that is not at first hermitian. Requirement that a measurement shall not change one Hamiltonian eigenstate into another one with a different eigenvalue imposes that an inner product must be defined so as to make the Hamiltonian normal with regard to it. After a long time development with the non-hermitian Hamiltonian, only a subspace of possible states will effectively survive. On this subspace the effect of the anti-hermitian part of the Hamiltonian is suppressed, and the Hamiltonian becomes hermitian. Thus hermiticity emerges automatically, and we have no reason to maintain that at the fundamental level the Hamiltonian should be hermitian. If the Hamiltonian is given in a local form, a conserved probability current density can be constructed with two kinds of wave functions. We also point out a possible misestimation of a past state by extrapolating back in time with the hermitian Hamiltonian. It is a seeming past state, not a true one.

Subject Index : 060
URL : http://ptp.ipap.jp/link?PTP/125/633/
DOI : 10.1143/PTP.125.633

^*E-mail: nagao@mx.ibaraki.ac.jp, nagao@nbi.dk
^**E-mail: hbech@nbi.dk

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Citing Article(s) :

Progress of Theoretical Physics Vol. 126 No. 6 (2011) pp. 1021-1049 :
Formulation of Complex Action Theory

Keiichi Nagao and Holger Bech Nielsen