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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Time observables with projective covariance

Nicola Pinamonti, M. Toller

Published Apr 8, 2002• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We study the positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) on the projective real line covariant with respect to the projective group. We interpret the projective line as a compactified time axis and we assume that the energy is a positive operator. This formalism may describe a time-of-arrival observable for a free particle covariant with respect to linear canonical transformations. The problem is similar to the more complicated and physically more relevant problem of finding the POVMs on the compactified Minkowski space-time covariant with respect to the conformal group.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/35/15/313

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We study the positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) on the projective real line covariant with respect to the projective group. We interpret the projective line as a compactified time axis and we assume that the energy is a positive operator. This formalism may describe a time-of-arrival observable for a free particle covariant with respect to linear canonical transformations. The problem is similar to the more complicated and physically more relevant problem of finding the POVMs on the compactified Minkowski space-time covariant with respect to the conformal group.
The present paper deals with the quantum coordinates of an event in space-time, specified by a quantum object. It is known that these observables cannot be described by self-adjoint operators or by the corresponding spectral projection-valued measure. We describe them by means of a positive-operator-valued (POV) measure in the Minkowski space-time, satisfying a suitable covariance condition with respect to the Poincar\'e group. This POV measure determines the probability that a measurement of the coordinates of the event gives results belonging to a given set in space-time. We show that this measure must vanish on the vacuum and the one-particle states, which cannot define any event. We give a general expression for the Poincar\'e covariant POV measures. We define the baricentric events, which lie on the world line of the center of mass, and we find a simple expression for the average values of their coordinates. Finally, we discuss the conditions which permit the determination of the coordinates with an arbitrary accuracy.
We introduce a formalism for the calculation of the time of arrival t at a space point for particles traveling through interacting media. We develop a general formulation that employs quantum canonical transformations from the free to the interacting cases to compute t in the context of the positive-operator-valued measures. We then compute the probability distribution in the times of arrival at a point for particles that have undergone reflection, transmission or tunneling off finite potential barriers. For narrow Gaussian initial wave packets we obtain multimodal time distribution of the reflected packets and a combination of the Hartman effect with unexpected retardation in tunneling. We also employ explicitly our formalism to deal with arrivals in the interaction region for the step and linear potentials.
We construct a family of bounded, finitely additive, covariant positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) on the real line by applying generalised Banach-Cesaro asymptotic averaging to locally finite covariant POVMs. In contrast to the strictly shift-invariant case, where countably additive operator measures are restricted to scalar multiples of a single fixed operator, the introduced covariant setting allows for non-commuting averaged operator values while successfully normalising the total mass. We develop an integration theory for complex-valued functions by taking the completion of simple integrable functions with respect to the continuous operator norm induced by the positive integral of their absolute values. The integration spaces for the original and the averaged measures are shown to possess distinct null classes. Finally, we introduce the operator-valued Fourier transform on these integration spaces and analyze the core algebraic constraints imposed by the covariance property on the exponential multipliers.