What is meant by “the formalism” of quantum mechanics?”
Answers
Answer:
What is meant by “the formalism” of quantum mechanics?”
A: Basically, the formalism of quantum wave mechanics is mathematics consist-
ing of (1) a differential equation like Schrödinger’s wave equation that relates mass,
energy, and momentum; (2) the mathematical solutions of that wave equation, called
wave functions, which contain information about location, energy, momentum, etc.
of some system; (3) operators that can extract quantities of interest from quantum
wave functions, and (4) procedures for using operators and wave functions to make
predictions about physical measurements on the system. See Appendix B for more
details. The formalism of quantum matrix mechanics involves using matrix repre-
sentations and manipulations to describe and connect the states of a system and will
not be described further here.
Answer:
In brief, values of physical observables such as energy and momentum were no longer considered as values of functions on phase space, but as eigenvalues; more precisely as spectral values of linear operators in Hilbert space.