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arXiv:1501.03137 · Reviews in Mathematical Physics

Paths of canonical transformations and their quantization

Maurice A. de Gosson

Published Jul 1, 2015• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In their simplest formulations, classical dynamics is the study of Hamiltonian flows and quantum mechanics of propagators. Both are linked, and emerge from the datum of a single classical concept, the Hamiltonian function. We study and emphasize the analogies between Hamiltonian flows and quantum propagators; this allows us to verify G. Mackey's observation that quantum mechanics (in its Weyl formulation) is a refinement of Hamiltonian mechanics. We discuss in detail the metaplectic representation, which very explicitly shows the close relationship between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics; the latter emerging from the first by lifting Hamiltonian flows to the double covering of the symplectic group. We also give explicit formulas for the factorization of Hamiltonian flows into simpler flows, and prove a quantum counterpart of these results.

DOI
10.1142/s0129055x15300034

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In their simplest formulations, classical dynamics is the study of Hamiltonian flows and quantum mechanics of propagators. Both are linked, and emerge from the datum of a single classical concept, the Hamiltonian function. We study and emphasize the analogies between Hamiltonian flows and quantum propagators; this allows us to verify G. Mackey's observation that quantum mechanics (in its Weyl formulation) is a refinement of Hamiltonian mechanics. We discuss in detail the metaplectic representation, which very explicitly shows the close relationship between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics; the latter emerging from the first by lifting Hamiltonian flows to the double covering of the symplectic group. We also give explicit formulas for the factorization of Hamiltonian flows into simpler flows, and prove a quantum counterpart of these results.
The aim of this chapter is to construct the quantum unitary propagator for Hamiltonians which are quadratic in position and momentum with time-dependent coefficients. We show that the quantum evolution is exactly solvable in terms of the classical flow which is linear. This allows to construct the metaplectic transformations which are unitary operators in L2(Rn)L^2(\mathbb R^n)L2(Rn) corresponding to symplectic transformations. Simple examples of such metaplectic transformations are the Fourier transform, which corresponds to the symplectic matrix J defined in (3.4) and the propagator of the harmonic oscillator, corresponding to rotations in the phase space. The main results of this chapter are computations of the quantum evolution operators for quadratic Hamiltonians acting on coherent states. We show that the time evolved coherent states are still Gaussian states which are recognized to be squeezed states centered at the classical phase space point (see Chap. 8). From these computations we can deduce most of properties concerning quantum quadratic Hamiltonians. In particular we get the explicit form of the Weyl symbols of the metaplectic transformations. These formulae are generalizations of the Mehler formula for the harmonic oscillator. Quadratic Hamiltonians are very important in quantum mechanics because more general Hamiltonians can be considered as non trivial perturbations of time dependent quadratic ones as we shall see in Chap. 5.
Classical and quantum physics represent two distinct theories; however, quantum physics is regarded as the more fundamental of the two. It is posited that classical mechanics should arise from quantum mechanics under certain limiting conditions. Nevertheless, this remains a challenging objective. In this work, we explore the potential for unifying the dynamics of classical and quantum physics. This discussion does not suggest that classical behavior emerges from quantum mechanics; rather, it demonstrates the exact equivalence between the dynamics of quantum observables and their classical counterparts. It is shown that the Heisenberg equations of motion can be cast in a form that is structurally equivalent to Newton's equations of motion, with ℏ\hbarℏ dropping out from the equations. In a generalized analysis, the Heisenberg equations are cast in a form that is identical to the classical Hamilton's equations of motion. This implies that both quantum and classical dynamics are governed by the same form of equations, with the Heisenberg operators substituting the classical observables.
It is well known from the work of Berezin [24] (Commun. Math. Phys. 40:153–174, 1975) in 1975 that the quantization problem of a classical mechanical system is closely related with coherent states. In particular coherent states help to understand the limiting behaviour of a quantum system when the Planck constant ℏ\hbar ℏ becomes negligible in macroscopic units. This problem is called the semi-classical limit problem. In this chapter we discuss properties of quantum systems when the configuration space is the Euclidean space Rn\mathbb R^nRn. So that in the Hamiltonian formalism, the phase space is Rn×Rn\mathbb R^n\times \mathbb R^nRn×Rn with its canonical symplectic form σ\sigma σ. The quantization problem has many solutions, so we choose a convient one, introduced by Weyl [259] (The Classical Groups, 1997) and Wigner [261] (Group Theory and Its Applications to Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra, 1959). We study the symmetries of Weyl quantization, the operationnal calculus and applications to propagation of observables. We show that Wick quantization is a natural bridge between Weyl quantization and coherent states. Applications are given to the semi-classical limit after introducing an efficient modern tool: the semi-classical measures. We illustrate the general results proved in this chapter by explicit computations for the harmonic oscillator. More applications will be given in the following chapters, in particular concerning propagators and trace formulas for a large class of quantum systems.
We develop a path integral representation for the dynamics of quantum systems with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, formulated entirely within a discrete phase space. Starting from the discrete Wigner function on Zd×Zd{\mathbb{Z}_d} \times {\mathbb{Z}_d}Zd​×Zd​ (ddd an odd prime) and the associated Weyl transform built from generalized displacement operators, we derive an exact kernel that propagates the discrete Wigner function in time and, by iterating its composition law through a short-time approximation, obtain a sum-over-paths expression weighted by a discrete phase-space action -- the natural finite-dimensional counterpart of Marinov's functional. For Hamiltonians linear in the phase-space coordinates and at times strictly commensurate with the lattice, the fluctuation sum collapses to a deterministic shift, realizing the discrete analog of classical Hamiltonian flow. Applying the formalism to one and to two interacting qutrits (d=3d=3d=3), we show that the full entanglement dynamics -- captured by a closed-form linear entropy valid for all times -- requires the coherent contribution of all fluctuation sectors; the boundary-term (mean-field) sector alone fails to reproduce it. For a non-stabilizer Hamiltonian, where the short-time kernel is only approximate, the time-sliced path integral converges to the exact dynamics, including the dynamical generation of Wigner negativity. We discuss implications for the semiclassical simulation of many-body spin systems and for the characterization of non-classicality through Wigner negativity.