The Heisenberg–Weyl group in the coherent state basis and the Bargmann transform

Abstract

It is shown that the representation matrices of the quantum mechanical group in the coherent state basis can be used as bases for the expansion of arbitrary square integrable functions on the group. Although this basis is nonorthogonal the expansion can be inverted in a manner similar to an orthogonal basis. Next a coherent state ‘‘wave function’’ is defined in analogy with the Schrödinger wave function and the above matrix elements are used to determine the action of the group in the space of the coherent state wave functions. The function space in this realization is Bargmann’s Hilbert space of analytic functions. It is shown that the mixed basis matrix element between the coordinate and coherent state bases is essentially the integral kernel of Bargmann. The transpose of this matrix element yields the kernel for the inversion of the transform. In this construction the Bargmann transform appears as the unitary transformation connecting the Schrödinger and coherent state wave functions. This considerably simplifies Bargmann’s original arguments and yields the integral transform as well as its inversion formula in a simple way.