Definition 1. A unitary operator is a bounded linear operator on a Hilbert space that satisfies, where is the adjoint of, and is the identity operator. The weaker condition defines an isometry. The other condition,, defines a coisometry. Thus a unitary operator is a bounded linear operator which is both an isometry and a coisometry, or, equivalently, a surjective isometry. An equivalent definition is the following: Definition 2. A unitary operator is a bounded linear operator on a Hilbert space for which the following hold:
is surjective, and
preserves the inner product of the Hilbert space,. In other words, for all vectors and in we have:
The notion of isomorphism in the category of Hilbert spaces is captured if domain and range are allowed to differ in this definition. Isometries preserve Cauchy sequences, hence the completeness property of Hilbert spaces is preserved The following, seemingly weaker, definition is also equivalent: Definition 3. A unitary operator is a bounded linear operator on a Hilbert space for which the following hold:
preserves the inner product of the Hilbert space,. In other words, for all vectors and in we have:
To see that Definitions 1 & 3 are equivalent, notice that preserving the inner product implies is an isometry. The fact that has dense range ensures it has a bounded inverse. It is clear that. Thus, unitary operators are just automorphisms of Hilbert spaces, i.e., they preserve the structure of the space on which they act. The group of all unitary operators from a given Hilbert space to itself is sometimes referred to as the Hilbert group of, denoted or.
Rotations in are the simplest nontrivial example of unitary operators. Rotations do not change the length of a vector or the angle between two vectors. This example can be expanded to.
On the vector space of complex numbers, multiplication by a number of absolute value, that is, a number of the form for, is a unitary operator. is referred to as a phase, and this multiplication is referred to as multiplication by a phase. Notice that the value of modulo does not affect the result of the multiplication, and so the independent unitary operators on are parametrized by a circle. The corresponding group, which, as a set, is the circle, is called.
More generally, unitary matrices are precisely the unitary operators on finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, so the notion of a unitary operator is a generalization of the notion of a unitary matrix. Orthogonal matrices are the special case of unitary matrices in which all entries are real. They are the unitary operators on.
Unitary operators are used in unitary representations.
Linearity
The linearity requirement in the definition of a unitary operator can be dropped without changing the meaning because it can be derived from linearity and positive-definiteness of the scalar product: Analogously you obtain
Properties
The spectrum of a unitary operator lies on the unit circle. That is, for any complex number in the spectrum, one has. This can be seen as a consequence of the spectral theorem for normal operators. By the theorem, is unitarily equivalent to multiplication by a Borel-measurable on, for some finite measure space. Now implies, -a.e. This shows that the essential range of, therefore the spectrum of, lies on the unit circle.
A linear map is unitary if it is surjective and isometric.
