Quantum Mechanics – Radial Position Operator

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While trying to find the expectation value of the radial distance $r$ of an electron in hydrogen atom in ground state the expression is:

$$\begin{aligned}\langle r\rangle &=\langle n \ell m|r| n \ell m\rangle=\langle 100|r| 100\rangle \\ &=\int r\left|\psi_{n \ell m}(r, \theta, \phi)\right|^{2} d V \end{aligned}$$

Since Hilbert space operators act on kets, What operator is $r$ in the expression:
$$\begin{aligned}\langle r\rangle &=\langle n \ell m|r| n \ell m\rangle=\langle 100|r| 100\rangle~? \end{aligned}$$

Is it a component of the position operator $\mathbf x$ that is related to the radial distance?

Does it act on kets as:

$$\hat{r}|r \theta \phi\rangle=r|r \theta \phi\rangle~?$$

Best Answer

You have gone awry at the end of your question, utilizing ambiguous/meaningless notation.

Here, it is best to use the caret $\hat {\mathbf v}$ to signify a unit vector, as in Sakurai-Napolitano (3.6.22,23), $$ \langle {\mathbf x}|nlm\rangle = R_{nl}(r) Y^m_l(\theta,\phi)= R_{nl}(r) \langle \hat {\mathbf x}|l,m\rangle , $$ and not an operator, as in the punchline of your question: use another symbol for operators, instead.

Consequently, by inspection, $$ \langle r\rangle =\int r^2 dr ~~ r (R_{nl}(r))^2 , $$ since the $d\Omega$ integral factored out to 1.

The linear power of r in this expression is just just a c-number, the radial value (length) of the c-number vector ${\mathbf x}= r \hat {\mathbf x}$, since you are working in the coordinate representation.

If you must think of an operator with eigenvalue r, it is $\large \mathbb r$ s.t. $$ {\large \mathbb r} ~ |{\mathbf x}\rangle= r |{\mathbf x}\rangle , $$ and you could apply the machinery of Dirac's ket notation in the above, which, however, is superfluous, and, evidently, confusing here.

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