Quantum Mechanics – Is the Square of the Spin Exchange Operator 1?

quantum mechanicsquantum-spinspinors

The Dirac spin exchange operator is defined as,

\begin{equation}
P_\sigma = \frac{1}{2} (1 + \vec{\sigma}_1 \cdot \vec{\sigma}_2)
\end{equation}

Is $P_\sigma ^2 = 1$ ?

I think it should be, because applying the exchange operator twice should result in an identity, but I'm not sure how to prove it mathematically.

Best Answer

Yes. It can be seen easily by using a very utilized change in QM. You can see that $$ \vec{\sigma}_1 \vec{\sigma}_2 = \frac{1}{2} ( (\vec{\sigma}_1+\vec{\sigma}_2)^2 - \vec{\sigma}_1^2 -\vec{\sigma}_2^2 )$$

N.B. here we use the fact that $\vec{\sigma}_1 \vec{\sigma}_2 = \vec{\sigma}_2 \vec{\sigma}_1$ since they operate on different Hilbert spaces.

Now, from Pauli matrices algebra $\vec{\sigma}^2 = 3 $ therefore $$ \vec{\sigma}_1 \vec{\sigma}_2 = -3 +\frac{1}{2} (\vec{\sigma}_1 +\vec{\sigma}_2)^2 = -3 +2 (\vec{S}_1+\vec{S}_2)^2 $$

since $\vec{S} = \frac{1}{2} \vec{\sigma}$.

So the spin-exchange can be written as $$ \frac{1}{2}(1+ \vec{\sigma}_1 \vec{\sigma}_2 ) = -1 + (\vec{S}_1 + \vec{S}_2)^2 $$ You should know from spin addition algebra that there are a singlet state and three triplet states that are eigenstates of $(\vec{S}_1 + \vec{S}_2)^2 $ with eigenvalues 0 for the singlet and 2 for the triplets, therefore there are four linear independent states for which the this operator has a diagonalan representation as: $(\vec{S}_1 + \vec{S}_2)^2 = diag(0,2,2,2)$

and therefore, on the same basis, the spin exchange operator have diagonal representation as:

$$ \frac{1}{2}(1+ \vec{\sigma}_1 \vec{\sigma}_2 ) = diag(-1,1,1,1 ) $$

The square of this matrix is clearly the identity as you wanted to prove.