state
A state on a -algebra is a positive linear functional, for all , with unit norm.The norm of a positive linear functional is defined by
(1) |
For a unital -algebra, .
The space of states is a convex set.Let and be states, then the convex combination
(2) |
is also a state.
A state is pure if it is not a convex combination of two other states.Pure states are the extreme points of the convex set of states.A pure state on a commutative -algebra is equivalent to a character
.
A state is called a tracial state if it is also a trace.
When a -algebra is represented on a Hilbert space ,every unit vector
determines a (not necessarily pure) state in the form of an expectation value,
(3) |
In physics, it is common to refer to such states by their vector rather than the linear functional .The converse
is not always true; not every state need be given byan expectation value.For example, delta functions (which are distributions
not functions)give pure states on ,but they do not correspond to any vector in a Hilbert space(such a vector would not be square-integrable).
References
- 1 G. Murphy, -Algebras and Operator Theory. Academic Press, 1990.