Good references for Rigged Hilbert spaces? - MathOverflow

Good references for Rigged Hilbert spaces?

2010-10-23T16:37:43Z

Every now and then I attempt to understand better quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, but for a variety of possible reasons, I find it very difficult to read any kind of physicist account, even when the physicist is trying to be mathematically respectable. (I am not trying to be disrespectful or controversial here; take this as a confession of stupidity if it helps.) I am generally interested in finding online mathematical accounts which ideally would come close to being of "Bourbaki standard": definition-theorem-proof and written for mathematicians who prefer conceptual explanations, and ideally with tidy or economical notation (e.g., eschewing thickets of subscripts and superscripts).

More specifically, right now I would like a (mathematically trustworthy) online account of rigged Hilbert spaces, if one exists.

Maybe I am wrong, but the Wikipedia account looks a little bit suspect to me: they describe a rigged Hilbert space as consisting of a pair of inclusions $i: S \to H$, $j: H \to S^\ast$ of topological vector space inclusions, where $S^\ast$ is the strong dual of $S$, $H$ is a (separable) Hilbert space, $i$ is dense, and $j$ is the conjugate linear isomorphism $H \simeq H^\ast$ followed by the adjoint $i^\ast: H^\ast \to S^\ast$. This seems a little vague to me; should $S$ be more specifically a nuclear space or something? My guess is that a typical application would be where $S$ is Schwartz space on $\mathbb{R}^4$, with its standard dense inclusion in $L^2(\mathbb{R}^4)$, so $S^\ast$ consists of tempered distributions.

I also hear talk of a nuclear spectral theorem (due to Gelfand and Vilenkin) used to help justify the rigged Hilbert space technology, but I don't see precise details easily available online.

Answer by mathphysicist for Good references for Rigged Hilbert spaces?

2010-10-23T17:15:35Z

The Springer online Encyclopedia of Mathematics' entry on RHS looks more rigorous albeit also more succinct than Wikipedia; for another online intro see the nlab entry. In addition to the references listed there, a rigorous discussion of the RHS can be found (as far as I recall -- I do not have a copy handy) e.g. in the two-volume book Principles of Advanced Mathematical Physics by Robert D. Richtmyer. Also, it appears that, unlike the physics community, the name Gelfand triple (rather than RHS) is more commonly used by the mathematicians.

Answer by Richard Borcherds for Good references for Rigged Hilbert spaces?

2010-10-23T17:34:04Z

"Generalized functions volume 4" by Gelʹfand, Vilenkin, (Math review number 0146653) has a long an detailed discussion of rigged Hilbert spaces and nuclear spaces. The book by Glimm and Jaffe has a brief summary of the theory.

Answer by student for Good references for Rigged Hilbert spaces?

2010-10-23T19:34:59Z

Some time ago I was interested in rigged Hilbert space to get a better understanding of quantum physics. On that occasion I collected some references on this subject, see below. It's quite comprehensive. A good starting point for an overview could be the works of Madrid and Gadella. Note that there are different versions of "rigged Hilbert space" (in context of quantum physics) in literature.

J.-P. Antoine. Dirac formalism and symmetry problems in quantum mechanics. i. general dirac formalism. Journal of Mathematical Physics, 10(1):53--69, 1969.

N.Bogoliubov, A.Logunov, and I.Todorov. Introduction to Axiomatic Quantum Field Theory, chapter 1 Some Basic Concepts of Functional Analysis 4 The Space of States, pages 12--43, 113--128. Benjamin, Reading, Massachusetts, 1975.

R.de la Madrid. Quantum Mechanics in Rigged Hilbert Space Language. PhD thesis, Depertamento de Fisica Teorica Facultad de Ciencias. Universidad de Valladolid, 2001. (available here)

M.Gadella and F.Gómez. A unified mathematical formalism for the dirac formulation of quantum mechanics. Foundations of Physics, 32:815--869, 2002. (available here)

M.Gadella and F.Gómez. On the mathematical basis of the dirac formulation of quantum mechanics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 42:2225--2254, 2003.

M.Gadella and F.Gómez. Dirac formulation of quantum mechanics: Recent and new results. Reports on Mathematical Physics, 59:127--143, 2007.

I.M. Gelfand and N.J. Vilenkin. Generalized Functions, vol. 4: Some Applications of Harmonic Analysis, volume4, chapter 2-4, pages 26--133. Academic Press, New York, 1964.

A.R. Marlow. Unified dirac-von neumann formulation of quantum mechanics. i. mathematical theory. Journal of Mathematical Physics, 6:919--927, 1965.

E.Prugovecki. The bra and ket formalism in extended hilbert space. J. Math. Phys., 14:1410--1422, 1973.

J.E. Roberts. The dirac bra and ket formalism. Journal of Mathematical Physics, 7(6):1097--1104, 1966.

J.E. Roberts. Rigged hilbert spaces in quantum mechanics. Commun. math. Phys., 3:98--119, 1966. (available here)

Tjøstheim. A note on the unified dirac-von neumann formulation of quantum mechanics. Journal of Mathematical Physics, 16(4):766--767, 4 1975.

Edit I remember that there is also a discussion about Gelfand triples in physics in the Funktionalanalysis books by Siegfried Großmann but I don't have a copy handy the moment. Though it is in german it might be interesting for you, too.

Answer by Jon Bannon for Good references for Rigged Hilbert spaces?

2010-10-25T11:40:02Z

This is not precisely related to your question, but a certain notion of rigged Hilbert space occurs in the theory of C*-algebras. Particularly, one should look at the work of Marc Rieffel, e.g. http://math.berkeley.edu/~rieffel/papers/morita_equivalence.pdf. I figured I'd mention this because it is decidedly mathematical, and a useful idea.

Answer by Dale Roberts for Good references for Rigged Hilbert spaces?

2010-11-22T00:58:04Z

I would highly recommend looking at the chapter on Sobolev Towers in the book by Engel and Nagel One-Parameter Semigroups for Linear Evolution Equations or the "baby edition" A Short Course on Operator Semigroups.

It provides a really nice example of rigged Hilbert spaces. For example, if $A:D(A) \subset L^2 \to L^2$ is the (Dirichlet) Laplacian, then one can identify $D(A^n)$, $n=1,2,\ldots$ with Sobolev spaces and $D(A^{-n})$ with the negative Sobolev spaces (i.e. extrapolation spaces of $A$).

This concept can be taken further if one considers analytic semigroups and fractional powers of operators and also into the Banach space setting (see Amann's book Linear and Quasilinear Parabolic Problems: Abstract linear theory).

Basically, the concept of rigged Hilbert spaces becomes really natural if one keeps PDEs and Sobolev spaces in mind.

Finally, the book by Reed and Simon Methods of Modern Mathematical Physics - Vol 1: Functional analysis provides a number of references for rigged Hilbert spaces at the end of Section VII (page 244).