Self-adjointness from quantum-classical correspondence

Self-adjointness is a fundamental property of a linear operator in quantum mechanics. In physics, a self-adjoint operator is usually defined to be an operator which is own adjoint. However, this definition is in fact not satisfactory since a self-adjoint operator in this definition does not always have nice properties such as the spectral decomposition. Hence, in mathematics, a kind of completeness is also assumed in the definition of a self-adjoint operator. Here a natural question is how to judge whether an operator is self-adjoint. It has been believed that self-adjointness is closely related to completeness of the classical dynamics for a long time although a complete description of such relations has not been given so far. I am planning to talk about how self-adjointness is important in mathematical physics. Moreover, I will explain relations between self-adjointness and classical dynamics by introducing some examples.

*Please contact Keita Mikami or Hiroyasu Miyazaki's mailing address to get access to the Zoom meeting room.