<span class="mw-page-title-namespace">Blog</span><span class="mw-page-title-separator">:</span><span class="mw-page-title-main">Notes/Commutation of Pauli matrices</span>
Elena & Fabrice's Web

Commutation of Pauli matrices

From laussy.org's Blog about Notes.
Published: 00:19, 26 January 2011.

$\sigma$ being the annihilation operator of a two-level system (one of the Pauli matrices), $\sigma^\dagger$ its conjugate, $\mu,\nu,\eta,\theta$ boolean variables (0 or 1), the following general commutator reads in normal order:

$$ [{\sigma}^{\dagger\mu}\sigma^\nu,{\sigma}^{\dagger\eta}\sigma^\theta] = \nu\theta(\eta-\mu)\sigma +\mu\eta(\nu-\theta){\sigma}^\dagger +[(1-\mu)\nu\eta(1-\theta)-\mu(1-\nu)(1-\eta)\theta](1-2{\sigma}^\dagger\sigma). $$

I sometimes need this formula but always have to derive it again, which is very annoying (see this). (Unrelatedly, I also hope it is the last time I typeset something with texvc, as I plan to move to MathJax).