Heisenberg group Heisenberg group In mathematics, the Heisenberg group formula_1, named after Werner Heisenberg, is the group of 3×3 upper triangular matrices of the form under the operation of matrix multiplication. Elements "a, b" and "c" can be taken from any commutative ring with identity, often taken to be the ring of real numbers (resulting in the "continuous Heisenberg group") or the ring of integers (resulting in the "discrete Heisenberg group"). The continuous Heisenberg group arises in the description of one-dimensional quantum mechanical systems, especially in the context of the Stone–von Neumann theorem. More generally, one can consider Heisenberg groups associated to
Heisenberg group given action of the central Lie algebra element "z", up to a unitary equivalence: the nontrivial elements of the algebra are all equivalent to the usual position and momentum operators. Thus, the Schrödinger picture and Heisenberg picture are equivalent – they are just different ways of realizing this essentially unique representation. The same uniqueness result was used by David Mumford for discrete Heisenberg groups, in his theory of equations defining abelian varieties. This is a large generalization of the approach used in Jacobi's elliptic functions, which is the case of the modulo 2 Heisenberg group, of order 8. The simplest