0

The wikipedia article about Wick's theorem can be found here. In that article, they use a rather strange notation:

$$\hat{A}^{\bullet}\hat{B}^{\bullet}$$

the bullet superscript isn't defined in the article. I take it that they mean that $\hat{A}$ and $\hat{B}$ are operators or wavefunctions that need to be time ordered but have not been so already.

Can anyone clear this up for me?

Also, I suppose that physics stack exchange might be another place I could ask this.

  • 1
    The've defined the notation at the beginning of the section "Definition of contraction". The bullet doesn't have a meaning on its own, but two bullets is the notation for Wick contraction. – Adam Latosiński Apr 06 '19 at 19:11

1 Answers1

1

I've answered my own question with the help of Adam above:

The bullet notation used in the wikipedia article is to make up for the fact that whatever math editor they're using probably doesn't have the overhead bracket notation usually used to indicate that two variables are about to undergo a Wick contraction.

Or at least the math editor doesn't handle that symbol correctly, etc.