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Zeitschrift für Naturforschung A

Is There a Preferred Canonical Quantum Gauge?

Yakir Aharonov, J. Anandan

Published Feb 1, 1997• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The interaction between a long solenoid and a quantized charged particle in the field free region outside it is studied treating both systems quantum mechanically. This leads to a paradox which suggests that when the electromagnetic field is quantized, there may be a preferred quantum gauge for the vector potential. This paradox is resolved by canonically quantizing the system in a different gauge in which the classical Lagrangian contains an acceleration dependent term.

DOI
10.1515/zna-1997-1-207

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Abstract The interaction between a long solenoid and a quantized charged particle in the field free region outside it is studied treating both systems quantum mechanically. This leads to a paradox which suggests that when the electromagnetic field is quantized, there may be a preferred quantum gauge for the vector potential. This paradox is resolved by canonically quantizing the system in a different gauge in which the classical Lagrangian contains an acceleration dependent term.
Quantization of electromagnetic fields is investigated in the framework of stochastic variational method (SVM). Differently from the canonical quantization, this method does not require canonical form and quantization can be performed directly from the gauge invariant Lagrangian. The gauge condition is used to choose dynamically independent variables. We verify that, in the Coulomb gauge condition, SVM result is completely equivalent to the traditional result. On the other hand, in the Lorentz gauge condition, SVM quantization can be performed without introducing the indefinite metric. The temporal and longitudinal components of the gauge filed, then, behave as c-number functionals affected by quantum fluctuation through the interaction with charged matter fields. To see further the relation between SVM and the canonical quantization, we quantize the usual gauge Lagrangian with the Fermi term and argue a stochastic process with a negative second order correlation is introduced to reproduce the indefinite metric.
We give here a field-theoretical derivation of the Hamiltonian of the non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics in the Coulomb gauge using the Lagrange formalism. It leads to the same result as the usual derivation, where one just replaces the classical vector potential in the minimal coupling of the second quantized electron Hamiltonian by the quantized one and adds the photon energy. This approach illustrates however the proper use of the Euler-Lagrange equations and the canonical formalism that fail if one tries to build up the many-body quantum theory starting from the classical theory of point-like particles interacting with electromagnetic fields.
We examine a covariant quantization of electromagnetic fields by using an operator derived from a constant scalar that can be called extended Lorentz gauge. The quantization can avoid an inconsistency between Lorentz gauge and a commutation relation, which can eliminate the need for introduction of physical state defined by a subsidiary condition and auxiliary field in Lagrangian density in Lorentz gauge. By using this quantization and indefinite metric straightforwardly, all quantum phenomena can be provided without enigmatic and paradoxical "probability interpretation".
The notion that the electromagnetic field is quantized is usually inferred from observations such as the photoelectric effect and the black-body spectrum. However accounts of the quantization of this field are usually mathematically motivated and begin by introducing a vector potential, followed by the imposition of a gauge that allows the manipulation of the solutions of Maxwell's equations into a form that is amenable for the machinery of canonical quantization. By contrast, here we quantize the electromagnetic field in a less mathematically and more physically motivated way. Starting from a direct description of what one sees in experiments, we show that the usual expressions of the electric and magnetic field observables follow from Heisenberg's equation of motion. In our treatment, there is no need to invoke the vector potential in a specific gauge and we avoid the commonly used notion of a fictitious cavity that applies boundary conditions to the field.
Using the Landau and symmetric gauges for the vector potential of a constant magnetic field and the quantum problem of a charged particle moving on a flat surface, we show the classical electromagnetic gauge transformation does not correspond to a one-dimensional unitary group transformation U(1) of the wave function for the quantum case. In addition, with the re-examination of the relation between the magnetic field B and its vector potential A, we found that, in order to have a consistent formulation of the dynamics of the charged particle with both expressions, we must have that B=∇×A if and only if B≠0.