What exactly does taking half a derivative mean (conceptually)?
I can't think of any simple concept to
directly relate it to as you can with the operator
and the concept of change. (You don't often get such a natural conceptualisation of the more advanced mathematical constructions.)
But to motivate it, it is pretty natural to work with polynomials in
. This is precisely what constitutes a constant coefficient linear ODE, and these pop up EVERYWHERE.
This begs the question: If we can sensibly apply a polynomial to D (a linear operator), can we find a sensible and useful way to apply more general functions to D? Or other linear operators? These questions lead to the study of functional calculus, which is immensely useful in PDE, spectral theory, etc.
The operator of "half-differentiation" is just the square root of D. It obeys the properties that you would expect. For example, applying it twice to a given differentiable function will just give you the functions derivative.