A new approach to classical mechanics

F.A. Neretin, P.P. Rymkevich

Willis E. Lamb

It has been shown that Newtonian classical mechanics (NCM) suffers from several kinds of chaotic indeterminacies. That means, a large set of problems treated with NCM gives results which are in wild disagreement with observation. In the present paper, these shortcomings are repaired in a simple, obvious, and essentially unique manner. The NCM theory is thereby transformed into a new theory which is fully equivalent to the Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Dirac nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, with the vital addition of Born’s probabilistic interpretation of the wave function built in from the start. I call this new theory “super classical quantum mechanics” (SCQM). Using Ehrenfest’s theorem of 1927, the classical limit of the new theory, SCQM, is seen to give exactly the results expected of the repaired Newtonian theory of classical mechanics.

Nuno Costa Dias, João Nuno Prata

We investigate the possibility that the semiclassical limit of quantum mechanics might be correctly described by a classical dynamical theory, other than standard classical mechanics. Using a set of classicality criteria proposed in a related paper, we show that the time evolution of a set of quantum initial data satisfying these criteria is fully consistent with the predictions of a new theory of classical dynamics. The dynamical structure of the new theory is given by the Moyal bracket. This is a Lie bracket that was first derived as the dynamical structure of the Moyal-Weyl-Wigner formulation of quantum mechanics. We present a new derivation of the Moyal bracket, this time in the context of the semiclassical limit of quantum mechanics and thus prove that both classical and quantum dynamics can be formulated in terms of the same canonical structure.