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arXiv:1303.2590 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Born–Jordan quantization and the uncertainty principle

Maurice A. de Gosson

Published Oct 22, 2013• 9 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Weyl correspondence and the related Wigner formalism lie at the core of traditional quantum mechanics. We discuss here an alternative quantization scheme, the idea of which goes back to Born and Jordan, and which has recently been revived in another context, namely time–frequency analysis. We show in particular that the uncertainty principle does not enjoy full symplectic covariance properties in the Born and Jordan scheme, as opposed to what happens in the Weyl quantization.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/46/44/445301

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The rigorous equivalence of the Schrödinger and Heisenberg pictures requires that one uses Born-Jordan quantization in place of Weyl quantization. We confirm this by showing that the much discussed " angular momentum dilemma" disappears if one uses Born-Jordan quantization. We argue that the latter is the only physically correct quantization procedure. We also briefly discuss a possible redefinition of phase space quantum mechanics, where the usual Wigner distribution has to be replaced with a new quasi-distribution associated with Born-Jordan quantization, and which has proven to be successful in time-frequency analysis.
The aim of the famous Born and Jordan 1925 paper was to put Heisenberg's matrix mechanics on a firm mathematical basis. Born and Jordan showed that if one wants to ensure energy conservation in Heisenberg's theory it is necessary and sufficient to quantize observables following a certain ordering rule. One apparently unnoticed consequence of this fact is that Schrödinger's wave mechanics cannot be equivalent to Heisenberg's more physically motivated matrix mechanics unless its observables are quantized using this rule, and not the more symmetric prescription proposed by Weyl in 1926, which has become the standard procedure in quantum mechanics. This observation confirms the superiority of Born-Jordan quantization, as already suggested by Kauffmann. We also show how to explicitly determine the Born--Jordan quantization of arbitrary classical variables, and discuss the conceptual advantages in using this quantization scheme. We finally suggest that it might be possible to determine the correct quantization scheme by using the results of weak measurement experiments.
The aim of the famous Born and Jordan 1925 paper was to put Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics on a firm mathematical basis. Born and Jordan showed that if one wants to ensure energy conservation in Heisenberg’s theory it is necessary and sufficient to quantize observables following a certain ordering rule. One apparently unnoticed consequence of this fact is that Schrödinger’s wave mechanics cannot be equivalent to Heisenberg’s more physically motivated matrix mechanics unless its observables are quantized using this rule, and not the more symmetric prescription proposed by Weyl in 1926, which has become the standard procedure in quantum mechanics. This observation confirms the superiority of Born–Jordan quantization, as already suggested by Kauffmann. We also show how to explicitly determine the Born–Jordan quantization of arbitrary classical variables, and discuss the conceptual advantages in using this quantization scheme. We finally suggest that it might be possible to determine the correct quantization scheme by using the results of weak measurement experiments.
Abstract It has been argued that the Feynman path integral formalism leads to a quantization rule, and that this is the Born–Jordan rule which gives the unique quantization rule consistent with the correct short-time propagator behavior of the propagator for nonrelativistic systems. We examine this short-time approximation and conclude, contrary to prevailing views, that the asymptotic expansion applies only to Hamiltonian functions that are at most quadratic in the momentum and with constant mass. While the Born–Jordan rule suggests the appropriate quantization of functions in this class, there are other rules which give the same answer, most notably the Weyl quantization scheme.
We have shown in previous work that the equivalence of the Heisenberg and Schrödinger pictures of quantum mechanics requires the use of the Born and Jordan quantization rules. In the present work we give further evidence that the Born-Jordan rule is the correct quantization scheme for quantum mechanics. For this purpose we use correct short-time approximations to the action functional, initially due to Makri and Miller, and show that these lead to the desired quantization of the classical Hamiltonian.
Abstract Phase spaces as given by the Wigner distribution function provide a natural description of infinite-dimensional quantum systems. They are an important tool in quantum optics and have been widely applied in the context of time–frequency analysis and pseudo-differential operators. Phase-space distribution functions are usually specified via integral transformations or convolutions which can be averted and subsumed by (displaced) parity operators proposed in this work. Building on earlier work for Wigner distribution functions (Grossmann in Commun Math Phys 48(3):191–194, 1976. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01617867 ), parity operators give rise to a general class of distribution functions in the form of quantum-mechanical expectation values. This enables us to precisely characterize the mathematical existence of general phase-space distribution functions. We then relate these distribution functions to the so-called Cohen class (Cohen in J Math Phys 7(5):781–786, 1966. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1931206 ) and recover various quantization schemes and distribution functions from the literature. The parity operator approach is also applied to the Born–Jordan distribution which originates from the Born–Jordan quantization (Born and Jordan in Z Phys 34(1):858–888, 1925. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01328531 ). The corresponding parity operator is written as a weighted average of both displacements and squeezing operators, and we determine its generalized spectral decomposition. This leads to an efficient computation of the Born–Jordan parity operator in the number-state basis, and example quantum states reveal unique features of the Born–Jordan distribution.