We extend the notion of polar duality to pairs of transverse Lagrangian planes in the standard symplectic space. This allows us to show that polar duality has a natural interpretation in terms of symplectic geometry. We apply our results to the quantum principle of indeterminacy.
The notion of polarity between sets, well-known from convex geometry, is a geometric version of the Fourier transform. We exploit this analogy to propose a new simple definition of quantum indeterminacy, using what we call "hbar-polar quantum pairs", which can be viewed as pairs of position-momentum indeterminacy with minimum spread. The existence of such pairs is guaranteed by the usual uncertainty principle, but is at the same time more general. We use recent advances in symplectic topology to show that this quantum indeterminacy can be measured using a particular symplectic capacity related to action and which reduces to area in the case of one degree of freedom. We show in addition that polar quantum pairs are closely related to Hardy's uncertainty principle about the localization of a function and its Fourier transform.
We define and study the notion of quantum polarity, which is a kind of geometric Fourier transform between sets of positions and sets of momenta. Extending previous work of ours, we show that the orthogonal projections of the covariance ellipsoid of a quantum state on the configuration and momentum spaces form what we call a dual quantum pair. We thereafter show that quantum polarity allows solving the Pauli reconstruction problem for Gaussian wavefunctions. The notion of quantum polarity exhibits a strong interplay between the uncertainty principle and symplectic and convex geometry and our approach could therefore pave the way for a geometric and topological version of quantum indeterminacy. We relate our results to the Blaschke-Santaló inequality and to the Mahler conjecture. We also discuss the Hardy uncertainty principle and the less-known Donoho--Stark principle from the point of view of quantum polarity.
Polar duality is a well-known concept from convex geometry and analysis. In the present paper, we study two symplectically covariant versions of polar duality keeping in mind their applications to quantum mechanics. The first variant makes use of the symplectic form on phase space and allows a precise study of the covariance matrix of a density operator. The latter is a fundamental object in quantum information theory., The second variant is a symplectically covariant version of the usual polar duality highlighting the role played by Lagrangian planes. It allows us to define the notion of "geometric quantum states" with are in bijection with generalized Gaussians.
We define and study the notion of quantum polarity, which is a kind of geometric Fourier transform between sets of positions and sets of momenta. Extending previous work of ours, we show that the orthogonal projections of the covariance ellipsoid of a quantum state on the configuration and momentum spaces form what we call a dual quantum pair. We thereafter show that quantum polarity allows solving the Pauli reconstruction problem for Gaussian wavefunctions. The notion of quantum polarity exhibits a strong interplay between the uncertainty principle and symplectic and convex geometry and our approach could therefore pave the way for a geometric and topological version of quantum indeterminacy. We relate our results to the Blaschke-Santaló inequality and to the Mahler conjecture. We also discuss the Hardy uncertainty principle and the less-known Donoho-Stark principle from the point of view of quantum polarity.
We propose a geometric formulation of quantum indeterminacy based on polar duality between convex bodies representing position and momentum data. A pair (X,P) of centrally symmetric convex bodies is said to satisfy the indeterminacy condition when the h-polar of X is included in P. We show that this condition naturally arises from the geometry of quantum blobs and is closely related to Hardy's uncertainty principle and the Donoho--Stark inequalities. Using symplectic capacities and John ellipsoids, we associate a canonical covariance ellipsoid with every quantum polar pair and prove that it satisfies the quantum condition. The Robertson--Schrödinger inequalities follow as a consequence. This provides a non-statistical formulation of quantum indeterminacy from which the usual uncertainty relations emerge. which the usual uncertainty relations emerge.
We use the notion of polar duality from convex geometry and the theory of Lagrangian planes from symplectic geometry to construct a fiber bundle over ellipsoids that can be viewed as a quantum-mechanical substitute for the classical symplectic phase space. The total space of this fiber bundle consists of geometric quantum states, products of convex bodies carried by Lagrangian planes by their polar duals with respect to a second transversal Lagrangian plane. Using the theory of the John ellipsoid we relate these geometric quantum states to the notion of "quantum blobs" introduced in previous work; quantum blobs are the smallest symplectic invariant regions of the phase space compatible with the uncertainty principle. We show that the set of equivalence classes of unitarily related geometric quantum states is in a one-to-one correspondence with the set of all Gaussian wavepackets. We emphasize that the uncertainty principle appears in this paper as geometric property of the states we define, and is not expressed in terms of variances and covariances, the use of which was criticized by Hilgevoord and Uffink.