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arXiv:2607.26146

Lindbladian quantization of mechanical systems with nonholonomic constraints

Daniel Schubring, Sriram Ganeshan

quant-phcond-mat.stat-mechmath-phSubmitted Jul 28, 2026• Announced Jul 30, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Nonholonomic mechanics describes systems subject to non-integrable velocity constraints, such as rolling bodies and skating motion. These systems generally lack a canonical Hamiltonian formulation, obstructing standard quantization methods. Here we quantize nonholonomic systems as Markovian open quantum systems, with the nonholonomic constraint appearing in a large-dissipation limit. We find explicit Lindblad superoperators that reproduce the classical dynamics of the Chaplygin sleigh and the Suslov problem in the semiclassical limit. The master equation is numerically simulated, and the covariance is shown to satisfy a relation predicted by the theory of metastability in open quantum systems.

Comments
11 pages, 3 figures

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Nonholonomic mechanics describes systems subject to non-integrable velocity constraints, such as rolling bodies and skating motion. These systems generally lack a canonical Hamiltonian formulation, obstructing standard quantization methods. Here we quantize nonholonomic systems as Markovian open quantum systems, with the nonholonomic constraint appearing in a large-dissipation limit. We find explicit Lindblad superoperators that reproduce the classical dynamics of the Chaplygin sleigh and the Suslov problem in the semiclassical limit. The master equation is numerically simulated, and the covariance is shown to satisfy a relation predicted by the theory of metastability in open quantum systems.
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We present a direct and nonrecursive construction that maps an arbitrary planar polynomial dissipative flow α˙=h(α,α∗)\dotα=h(α,α^*)α˙=h(α,α∗) to an open quantum system in Gorini--Kossakowski--Sudarshan--Lindblad form. Given the homogeneous components of the classical drift, the corresponding Hamiltonian and collapse-operator blocks are obtained algebraically and independently at each degree. No recursive cancellation of lower-order terms is required: in the large-amplitude limit ∣α∣∼S→∞|α|\sim S\to\infty∣α∣∼S→∞, ordering-generated lower-degree terms are parametrically suppressed, while mean-field closure yields the prescribed leading O(S)O(S)O(S) drift for semiclassically localized states. This provides a simple and systematic route from dissipative classical dynamics to explicit open-quantum-system realizations, without claiming a unique microscopic quantization of the classical flow. We demonstrate the construction for stable fixed points, a Hopf bifurcation, and a bistable-ring flow. The corresponding Liouvillian spectra recover the classical relaxation exponents, the radial Floquet exponent and neutral phase direction of a limit cycle, and the separation between local relaxation and inter-ring switching in the bistable case. These examples show that the construction can be used not only to analyze a given quantum model, but also to design open quantum systems with prescribed classical dynamical structures in the semiclassical limit.
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