----------------------------------------------------------------------- How much functional analysis is needed to understand quantum mechanics? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A lot, if you want to understand it on a deep level. However, one needs very little of functional analysis in order to understand (a) the foundations of quantum mechanics, (b) the contents of typical textbooks on quantum mechanics. One doesn't need anything beyond the definition of a Hilbert space and the trace of an operator if one is (like most physicists) prepared to take for granted two quite nontrivial but reasonably intuitive functional analytic results: 1. The spectral theorem in the following form: Theorem. (Gelfand & Maurin) Given an arbitrary set of commuting self-adjoint operators defined on the same dense subspace of a Hilbert space, there is always an isomorphic Hilbert space in which these operators are represented by multiplication with real-valued functions. 2. The Hille-Yosida theorem in the following form: Theorem. (Hille & Yosida) The exponential exp(itH) of a Hermitian linear operator H defined on a (dense subspace of a) Hilbert space exists if and only iff A is self-adjoint. In this case, exp(itH) is a bounded operator, and hence defined on the whole Hilbert space. One may take the latter as a definition of self-adjoint; then there is hardly anything to prove. (The difficulty is then moved to proving easily checkable criteria for self-adjointness. On the importance to distinguish between hermiticity and self-adjointness see http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9907069 (by F. Gieres) for a gentle introduction and counterexamples. An in depth discussion is given in Vol. 1 of the math physics treatise by Reed and Simon, or Vol.3 of the math physics treatise by Thirring.) The proof of 1. is long, no matter how one does it. The bounded case is reduced to Gelfand's work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelfand_representation by noting that bounded commuting operators generate a commutative C^* algebra. One extends it to a maximal commutative C^* subalgebra B of the C^* algebra A of all bounded linear operators using Zorn's lemma (can perhaps be avoided if the Hilbert space is separable?), and then proceeds to show that A acts already on C_0(Phi_A). The unbounded case is easily reduced to the bounded case using Hille-Yosida. In his book, Maurin probably formulates the theorem not as I do (I don't know whether my formulation is in the literature - though it actually might be in Maurin) but in terms of rigged Hilbert spaces (= Gelfand triples) version, where (non-normalizable) eigenvectors exist. But for a rigorous presentation of textbook quantum mechanics, the rigged Hilbert space extension is not needed - except if one wants to have a rigorous version of the bra-ket calculus in case of a continuous spectrum. Indeed, one get the standard bra-ket heuristics for eigenkets from my formulation of the theorem in precisely the same way as it is introduced early on in the case of the position representation. Traditionally, an observable is a self-adjoint operator. The Gelfand-Maurin theorem proves that there is a diagonal representation. _This_ is the relevant fact, not the existence of normalizable eigenvectors, which one hasn't in the continuous part of the spectrum. If one takes the components of position, one gets the position representation. If one takes the components of momentum, one gets the momentum representation. In case of spin, one needs to add in both cases the operators J^2 and J_3 to get a maximally commuting system and hence up to isomorphism a unique diagonal representation.