Why don't creation and destruction operators conmute?

samedi 28 juin 2014

Hi.



I was wondering why creation and destruction operators a+ and a- do not conmute.



Of course, I can show that they don't conmute by computing the conmutator [a+, a-] = -1. But I want to know the "physical" meaning of this.



Isn't destruction/creation a symmetric transformation? We "go up the ladder" with a+ and we "go down the ladder" with a-. Shouldn't they therefore cancel each other, i.e. a+a-=a-a+ = I?



Thank you for your time.





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