Physics 125a Problem Set 1 Fall 2014

Problem Set 1
October 6, 2014; Due at noon on October 14, 2014
The total number of points is 50. Please feel free to use symbolic manipulation softwares like Math-
ematica or Maple.
1. Exercises in the basics of linear vector spaces [15 Points].
(a) (8 Points) In Shankars denition of a linear vector space, the axiom 1|v = |v was not
required. Is this axiom redundant? Let us consider a linear vector space with elements
(a
1
, a
2
). What if I dene vector sum in the usual way, namely
(a
1
, a
2
) +(b
1
, b
2
) =(a
1
+b
1
, a
2
+b
2
) (1)
and scalar multiplication as
(a
1
, a
2
) =(2a
1
, 2a
2
) (2)
Will this be compatible with all other axioms in Shankars Denition 1?
(b) (7 Points) All 22 matrices with complex elements form a linear vector space on C under
matrix summation and scalar multiplication. Consider the following three matrices
|1 =

0 1
0 0

, |2 =

1 1
0 1

, |3 =

2 1
0 2

. (3)
Are they linearly independent?
2. Exercises on Gram-Schmidt Procedure [20 Points]
(a) (8 Points) Here we have three vectors in C
3
,
|1 =

3
0
0

, |2 =

0
1
2

, |3 =

0
2
5

(4)
Carry out the Gram-Schmidt procedure and obtain an orthonormal basis from linear com-
binations of these vectors. [Comment: here we can either view |1, |2, and |3 as three
vectors in C
3
, or view these column vectors as representing the three vectors components in
an existing orthonormal basis.]
(b) (12 Points) Let us now consider functions on [1, 1]. Basically, each function f (x) can be
viewed as a vector, | f . Let us dene the following inner product
f | g =

+1
1
f

(x)g(x)dx. (5)
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Physics 125a Problem Set 1 Fall 2014
Carry out the Gram-Schmidt Procedure for the linearly independent set

1, x, x
2
, x
3
, x
4

(6)
[Here is a good place to use Mathematica/Maple instead of calculating by hand.]
3. (7 Points) In the 3-D Euclidean space, use |1, |2 and |3 to label unit vectors along the x, y and
z directions. Let us denote by R() a rotation of angle || along the direction of . For example
R(/2|1) is a rotation by /2 along the x direction.
(a) In the basis of {|1, |2, |3}, write down the matrices for R(/2|1), R(/2|2) and R(/2|3).
(b) Compute the commutator of each pair of them, and show that these operators do not
commute.
4. (8 Points) The trace of an operator is dened as
tr=

i
i||i (7)
where {|i} is an orthonormal basis.
(a) Show that the value of the trace does not depend on the orthonormal basis you use.
(b) Show that tr() =tr()
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