Phase operator and its eigenstate in Liouville space

Masashi Ban

Masashi Ban

A relative number state (RNS) representation of a system composed of two distinguishable subsystems is proposed. A phase variable as a quantum mechanical operator conjugate to a relative number operator is defined based on the RNS representation space. The phase operator is expressed as a unitary exponential operator. The properties of the relative number operator, the phase operator, and their eigenstates are investigated in detail. The phase variable has a maximum uncertainty in any stationary state. Also, a time operator as a dynamical variable can be defined in the RNS representation space. The RNS representation is closely related to the Liouville space formulation and to thermofield dynamics. The RNS representation is shown to be a suitable method for investigating the Josephson junction with ultrasmall capacitance. A basic formulation of number-phase quantization in the Josephson junction is given in terms of the RNS representation.

Masashi Ban

A relative-state formulation of quantum systems is presented in terms of relative-coordinate states, relative-number states, and relative-energy states. The relative-coordinate states are used to describe quantum systems in position and momentum representations. The probability distribution is calculated in terms of the relative-coordinate states and is shown to be equivalent to the functional definition of the quantum probability in phase space. It is shown that a quantum-mechanical phase operator can be constructed in terms of the relative-number states without the well-known difficulties. The results are compared with those obtained by the Pegg-Barnett phase-operator formalism and the relations to various other phase-operator methods are also discussed. The energy-measurement and energy-probability distributions are discussed in terms of the relative-energy states. Furthermore, a relative-state formulation is developed in the Liouville space. A phase representation in the Liouville space is introduced to investigate the time evolution of quantum coherence. In the Liouville space a time operator is defined as a canonical conjugate of the time-evolution generator, but not the Hamiltonian energy operator. The relation to the internal time presented by Prigogine and Misra is discussed.

Ioannis E. Antoniou, Manuel Gadella, Z. Suchanecki

Uri Peskin

In many cases, measurements are performed on “mixed” ensembles of realizations of a system, which cannot be associated with a single vector in its Hilbert space. In these cases the state of the system is represented by a proper “density operator.” It is instructive to associate density operators with state vectors in a vector space, termed Liouville’s space, where the Schrödinger equation is reformulated as the Liouville–Von Neumann equation. An important consequence of this equation is that the density operator of a system at equilibrium must commute with its Hamiltonian. Namely, the matrix representation of the density operator in the basis of Hamiltonian eigenstates is diagonal, where the diagonal elements are the relative populations of the system’s Hamiltonian eigenstates. The equilibrium populations are revealed by maximizing the (Von Neumann) entropy, subject to given constraints. We derive the equilibrium density operator explicitly for the cases of canonical and grand canonical ensembles.

G. S. Agarwal