Dynamics in Jordan Algebras
john (baez@math.ucr.edu)
Dynamics in Jordan Algebras
Posted by John Baez
In ordinary quantum mechanics, in the special case where observables are described as self-adjoint complex matrices, we can describe time evolution of an observable using Heisenberg’s equation
where is a fixed self-adjoint matrix called the Hamiltonian. This framework is great when we want to focus on observables rather than states. But Heisenberg’s equation doesn’t make sense in a general Jordan algebra. In this stripped-down framework, all we...