It is known that the equations of motion of a classical system do not in general determine its canonical description uniquely. Thus the corresponding quantum system obtained by canonical quantization is also ambiguous. We use this freedom to quantize a free nonrelativistic particle so that the corresponding quantum particle has half-integral or integral helicity. Methods are developed for finding inequivalent canonical descriptions of a given classical system. It is emphasized that classical symmetries can be broken at the quantum level by a suitable choice of the canonical formalism prior to quantization. It is suggested that this may provide a new mechanism for breaking internal symmetries at the quantum level.
It is known that the equations of motion of a classical system do not in general determine its canonical description uniquely. Thus the corresponding quantum system obtained by canonical quantization is also ambiguous. We use this freedom to quantize a free nonrelativistic particle so that the corresponding quantum particle has half-integral or integral helicity. Methods are developed for finding inequivalent canonical descriptions of a given classical system. It is emphasized that classical symmetries can be broken at the quantum level by a suitable choice of the canonical formalism prior to quantization. It is suggested that this may provide a new mechanism for breaking internal symmetries at the quantum level.
One classical theory, as determined by an equation of motion or set of classical trajectories, can correspond to many unitarily {\em in}equivalent quantum theories upon canonical quantization. This arises from a remarkable ambiguity, not previously investigated, in the construction of the classical (and hence the quantized) Hamiltonian or Lagrangian. This ambiguity is illustrated for systems with one degree of freedom: An arbitrary function of the constants of motion can be introduced into this construction. For example, the nonrelativistic and relativistic free particles follow identical classical trajectories, but the Hamiltonians or Lagrangians, and the canonically quantized versions of these descriptions, are inequivalent. Inequivalent descriptions of other systems, such as the harmonic oscillator, are also readily obtained.
It is well known that to quantize any dynamical system it is necessary for a generator of the classical motion to exist in the form of a Hamiltonian function. It is shown, by using the example of a damped harmonic oscillator, that a particular class of inequivalent classical Hamiltonians exist which make quantization of the system ambiguous. Hence it is conclued that it is not sufficient for the Hamiltonian to merely generate the motion, but it must also be necessarily related via a canonical transformation to the total energy of the system.
The diffculties of relativistic particle theories formulated my means of canonical quantization, such as Klein-Gordon and Dirac theories, ultimately led theoretical physicists to turn on quantum field theory to model elementary particle physics. The aim of the present work is to pursue a method alternative to canonical quantization that avoids these dfficulties. In order to guarantee this result, the present approach is constrained to be developed deductively from physical principles. The physical principles assumed for a free particle consist of the symmetry properties of the particle with respect to the Poincaré group and of the transformation properties of the position observable, expressed by means of a suitably conceived notion of quantum transformation. In so doing, the effectiveness of group theoretical methods is exploited. Our work has pointed out the necessity of new classes of irreducible representations of the Poincaré group the theory can be based on. For spin 0 particle, four inequivalent theories are completely determined, that differ from Klein-Gordon theory for the physical interpretation but also for the mathematical structures. In particular, two of these theories requires irreducible representations in the new classes. The present lack of the explicit transformation properties of position with respect to boosts forbids the complete determination of non zero spin particle theories. A particular form of these transformation properties was in past adopted by Jordan and Mukunda. We check its consistency within the present approach; it is found that for spin 1/2 particles there is only one consistent theory; it is unitarily related to Dirac theory, but, once again, it requires the new classes of irreducible representations.
The behavior of symmetries of classical equations of motion under quantization is studied from a new point of view. GL(3, R), which is an invariance group of the linear equations of motion for the nonrelativistic free particle as well as the isotropic harmonic oscillator, is imposed as a group of automorphisms on acceptable Poisson brackets, and the consequences are examined in detail. The six independent variables of the classical system arrange themselves, in each acceptable bracket, into one canonical pair and four neutral elements. Consequences of this for the equations of motion, existence of a Hamiltonian, breakup of the states of motion into superselected sectors due to existence of neutral elements, and determination of the canonically realized subgroup of GL(3, R) are all discussed. The possible relevance of this manner of symmetry breakdown for solid state and particle physics is pointed out.
The classical system is usually quantized using the canonical formalism, i.e., in the language of coordinates and momenta. In addition to this “purely algebraic” ambiguity, there is also an ambiguity in the choice of realization of the operators p^ and q^: the commutation relations do not determine it uniquely, but up to a unitary equivalence (the well known uniqueness theorem of von Neumann pertains only to the Weyl form of the commutation relations). The realization must be chosen on the basis of additional considerations regarding the nature of the canonical variables p and q. In this book the term “theory” is used in various ways: in a broad sense (quantum field theory, relativistic theory) and in a narrow sense, to refer to a particular system or class of systems with certain dynamics. In quantum theory there are also systems whose operators corresponding to canonical variables satisfy not commutation relations, but anticommutation relations.
A theory of quantization is given, for a model with symmetry, as the inverse of dequantization. Dequanrization is defined as tin� process of extracting the classical mechanics of a model from its quantal counterpart. It is shown that classical dynamics is embedded in quantum dynamics as a constrained subsystem. Thus, classical mechanics is obtained from quantum mechanics without taking limits of large-dimensional representations or letting h �? 0. The embedding shows that, under appropriate conditions, a quantal density can be identified with a classical state. The results are consistent with the conjecture that an algebraic model is quantized by constructing a unitary irrep of its spectrum generating algebra. Quantization of operators not in this algebra is determined by compatibility with dequantization: this method resolves the Dirac problem in a way that avoids the ambiguities of canonical quantization. Geometric quantization is used to express the vector coherent state inducing construction as a theory of quantization. The result provides physically useful quantum models for systems with an algebraic structure and intrinsic degrees of freedom. The results are illustrated by application to the S i (3) model of a rotor. An algebraic model of a rigid rotor is presented, anti the techniques of vector coherent state quantization are applied to give a quantization, including intrinsic degrees of freedom, that is compatible with the geometric structure of the corresponding classical model. An explicit dequantization of the asymmetric top, leading to Euler�s equations, illustrates the consistency of this quantization.