Heisenberg picture Heisenberg picture In physics, the Heisenberg picture (also called the Heisenberg representation) is a formulation (largely due to Werner Heisenberg in 1925) of quantum mechanics in which the operators (observables and others) incorporate a dependency on time, but the state vectors are time-independent, an arbitrary fixed basis rigidly underlying the theory. It stands in contrast to the Schrödinger picture in which the operators are constant, instead, and the states evolve in time. The two pictures only differ by a basis change with respect to time-dependency, which corresponds to the difference between active and passive transformations. The Heisenberg picture is the
Heisenberg group "n"-dimensional systems, and most generally, to any symplectic vector space. In the three-dimensional case, the product of two Heisenberg matrices is given by: Since the multiplication is not commutative, the group is non-abelian. The neutral element of the Heisenberg group is the identity matrix, and inverses are given by The group is a subgroup of the 2-dimensional affine group Aff(2): formula_2 acting on formula_6 corresponds to the affine transform formula_7. There are several prominent examples of the three-dimensional case. If , are real numbers (in the ring R) then one has the continuous Heisenberg group H(R). It is a nilpotent