Self-adjointness in quantum mechanics: a pedagogical path

Abstract

Observables in quantum mechanics are represented by self-adjoint operators on Hilbert space. Such ubiquitous, well-known, and very foundational fact, however, is traditionally subtle to be explained in typical first classes in quantum mechanics, as well as to senior physicists who have grown up with the lesson that self-adjointness is "just technical". The usual difficulties are to clarify the connection between the demand for certain physical features in the theory and the corresponding mathematical requirement of self-adjointness, and to distinguish between self-adjoint and hermitian operator not just at the level of the mathematical definition but most importantly from the perspective that mere hermiticity, without self-adjointness, does not ensure the desired physical requirements and leaves the theory inconsistent. In this work we organise an amount of standard facts on the physical role of self-adjointness into a coherent pedagogical path aimed at making quantum observables emerge as necessarily self-adjoint, and not merely hermitian operators. Next to the central core of our line of reasoning -- the necessity of a non-trivial declaration of a domain to associate with the formal action of an observable, and the emergence of self-adjointness as a consequence of fundamental physical requirements -- we include some complementary materials consisting of a few instructive mathematical proofs and a short retrospective, ranging from the past decades to the current research agenda, on the self-adjointness problem for quantum Hamiltonians of relevance in applications.