nLab angular momentum

Contents

Context

Physics

physics, mathematical physics, philosophy of physics

Surveys, textbooks and lecture notes


theory (physics), model (physics)

experiment, measurement, computable physics

Representation theory

Contents

Idea

In classical mechanics, the analog of momentum for rotational dynamics is called angular momentum, and is defined as twice the product of the mass and the areal velocity.

In quantum mechanics, the angular momentum quantum observables constitute a representation of the (special) orthogonal group SO(n)SO(n) of nn-dimensional Euclidean space, in applications typically considered for n=3n = 3 or n=2n = 2.

Therefore the theory of quantum angular momentum is that of the irreducible representation of the rotation group.

References

Classical angular momentum

Representation theory of the special orthogonal group

  • Wheeler, Irreducible representation of the rotation group (pdf)

Last revised on May 16, 2022 at 23:50:45. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.