Given an integrable (solvable) quantum system with many equivalent degrees of freedom it is inevitable that consideration of the permutation group will arise. For example the least degenerate stationary states of the system must fall into irreducible representations of the permutation group. The ground state, as well as a class of low‐lying excited states, must fall into a particular irreducible representation. It will be demonstrated that a superposition of states within this representation leads to marginal probability distributions (partial traces), which are time‐independent. These marginal probability distributions are constant in time, but not in space. They provide a resource that can be exploited in reversible quasi‐static (equilibrium) changes of state, i.e. they are a quantum contribution to the entropy. They are necessarily an essential part of any quantum statement of the second law.
Given an integrable (solvable) quantum system with many equivalent degrees of freedom it is inevitable that consideration of the permutation group will arise. For example the least degenerate stationary states of the system must fall into irreducible representations of the permutation group. The ground state, as well as a class of low‐lying excited states, must fall into a particular irreducible representation. It will be demonstrated that a superposition of states within this representation leads to marginal probability distributions (partial traces), which are time‐independent. These marginal probability distributions are constant in time, but not in space. They provide a resource that can be exploited in reversible quasi‐static (equilibrium) changes of state, i.e. they are a quantum contribution to the entropy. They are necessarily an essential part of any quantum statement of the second law.
This chapter follows on from the previous chapter in quantum statistical mechanics but specialising on systems with identical particles. Using Gibbs prescritpion on generic states from Chapter 3, the occupation number representation is introduced. Constraints imposed on statistics by irreducible representations of the permutation group are discussed. These group-theoretic considerations are used to justify the use of Gentile’s parastatistics. Fermions and bosons are introduced as special cases of Gentile’s statistics, corresponding to the trivial representation of the permutation group for bosons, and the sign representation of the permutation group for fermions. Basic applications to fermions and bosons is given, including the Fermi–Dirac and Bose–Einstein statistics. A detailed expose of why photons are said to have zero chemical potential is also proposed.
General remarks As already mentioned in the Introduction, the exact solution of the main equation of quantum mechanics – the Schrödinger equation – lies beyond the potentialities of modern mathematics and computer technology. But a number of important inferences about the behaviour, structure and properties of a given quantum-mechanical many-particle system can be drawn without solving this equation, just by examining its symmetry properties. Symmetry concepts come about in physics in two ways. First, since any physical process occurs in a real space, we have to make use of one or another coordinate system. The isotropy and homogeneity of space make physically meaningful only those mathematical relationships that remain unchanged under rotations of the axes of the coordinate system, and that impose fairly rigorous constraints on the possible physical laws. Second, every physical object and process features a symmetry which should be taken into account by the physical theory. A common idea underlying particular forms of symmetry is the invariance of a system under a certain set (group) of transformations. The normally considered forms of symmetry are rotational symmetry, which is based on the equivalence of all directions in space, and permutation symmetry, which is caused by identical particles. The operations of the geometrical symmetry group are responsible for appropriate conservation laws. So, the rotational symmetry of a closed system gives rise to the law of conservation of angular momentum. The group of rotations of a three-dimensional space stands apart in atomic spectroscopy. This is mostly due to the high accuracy of the central field approximation, on which the entire modern theory of complex atoms and ions is based.
This article is the first of a trilogy that addresses various aspects of the perturbative response of general quantum systems, with possibly nontrivial ground state geometry, beyond linear order. Here, we use group theoretical considerations to investigate the structure of retarded correlators, and demonstrate how they decompose according to irreducible representations of a `time-reversal group' and relevant permutation groups, with the former probing dissipative and time-reversal properties, and the latter discerning configurational properties -- longitudinal, transverse and their generalizations. We establish second order fluctuation-dissipation and fluctuation-reaction theorems, and connect them to well-known second order transport effects such as the shift and injection currents. Exploiting the Schur-Weyl duality between irreducible representations of general linear groups and irreducible representations of permutation groups, we show how to decide which terms in the decomposition based on the latter can be supported by different crystals described via the 32 point groups, and perform the full point group classification for rank 3 and 4 polar and axial tensors. Our results provide a formal basis for the extraction of uniquely differing physical effects from retarded correlators. Applications to second order charge current responses in selected cases are given in part III.
Quantum-mechanical concepts can be formulated in constructive finite terms without loss of their empirical content if we replace a general unitary group by a unitary representation of a finite group. Any linear representation of a finite group can be realized as a subrepresentation of a permutation representation. Thus, quantum-mechanical problems can be expressed in terms of permutation groups. This approach allows us to clarify the meaning of a number of physical concepts. Combining methods of computational group theory with Monte Carlo simulation we study a model based on representations of permutation groups.
Abstract. In the present paper, we consider the marginal entropy of the a pure state in the tensor product of two Hilbert spaces. The expectation of the marginal entropy of a random pure state with respect to the Haar measure of unitary transformation on the tensor product Hilbert space depends on group integrals of unitary group. For group integrals of ordinary representation matrix elements of U(n), we provide a elementary method to reobtain Weingarton’s result of asymptotical behavior of group integrals. For group integrals of matrix elements of irreducible representations of U(n),we generalize the Weyl-Schur duality theorem and get an algorithm. 1. Mathematical Preliminaries We adopt the following standard conventions of quantum mechanics: The states of an n-level quantum system (and we include the case infinity) are represented by an n-dimensional complex Hilbert space H. In this familiar representation, the states of a composite of two systems A and B say, the first one A n-level, and the second B m-level, is then represented by the tensor product of the respective Hilbert spaces HA and HB. As a result, the composite system (AB) is an (nm)-level system. This also makes sense in the infinite case where we then use standard geometry for Hilbert space, and suitable choices of orthonormal bases (ONBs). For a fixed system with Hilbert space H, the corresponding pure quantum states are vectors in H of norm one, or rather equivalence classes of such vectors: Equivalent vectors v and v ′ in H yield the same rank-one projection operator P, i.e., the projection of H onto Key words and phrases. random pure state, marginal entropy,group integral, Weyl-Schur duality
In this work, we explore physical systems which support not only multipartite interparticle entanglement, but also intraparticle entanglement between different degrees of freedom of the constituent particles and entanglement between different degrees of freedom of different particles, i.e., algebraic entanglement. We derive a simple method for calculating the algebraic entanglement entropy between two of the particles' degrees of freedom from collective states of the whole ensemble. Our procedure makes use of underlying symmetries in these systems, in particular permutation symmetry of the particle indices, and shows a connection between the algebraic entanglement entropy in these systems and the irreducible representations of Lie groups which describe the particles' degrees of freedom. Namely, we use the direct sum over irreducible representations to diagonalize the reduced density matrices in a block-by-block manner, then utilize the multiplicity of these irreducible representations to reproduce the results from an exponentially-scaled Hilbert space in only polynomial complexity. We use this to explore a variety of systems where the constituent particles support two degrees of freedom each with two levels, such as atoms with two electronic states and two momentum states. Notably, these systems may be exactly simulated in a polynomial-scaled Hilbert space, yet they support an algebraic entanglement entropy that grows linearly with the particle number which typically requires an exponentially-scaled Hilbert space.