Scott, I am sure that would be a deeply satisfying explanation, and moreover, I would be able to find a nice concrete example by which I could explain it to all my readers, if only I knew what the hell a density matrix means, physically. Not how to define it, what it means. This information seems to have been left out of physics textbooks and Wikipedia.
I have never really had time to sit down and just study QM properly. I’m sure that the meaning of a density matrix will be completely obvious in retrospect. I’m sure that I will slap myself on the forehead for not getting earlier. And I’m sure that, once I finally get it, I will be filled with the same feeling of absolute indignation that overtook me when I realized why the area under a curve is the anti-derivative, realized how truly beautiful it was, and realized that this information had not been mentioned anywhere in my goddamned calculus textbook. Why?
Scott, I am sure that would be a deeply satisfying explanation, and moreover, I would be able to find a nice concrete example by which I could explain it to all my readers, if only I knew what the hell a density matrix means, physically. Not how to define it, what it means. This information seems to have been left out of physics textbooks and Wikipedia.
I have never really had time to sit down and just study QM properly. I’m sure that the meaning of a density matrix will be completely obvious in retrospect. I’m sure that I will slap myself on the forehead for not getting earlier. And I’m sure that, once I finally get it, I will be filled with the same feeling of absolute indignation that overtook me when I realized why the area under a curve is the anti-derivative, realized how truly beautiful it was, and realized that this information had not been mentioned anywhere in my goddamned calculus textbook. Why?
Another late response from me as I read through this series again:
“I realized why the area under a curve is the anti-derivative, realized how truly beautiful it was”
Would this be that the curve is the rate-of-change of the area (as the curve goes up, so does the area beneath it)?