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American Journal of Physics

Operator formulation of classical mechanics

Jack Cohn

Published May 1, 1980• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An operator formulation of classical mechanics is given. Rather than being concerned with Lie algebraic or abstract Hilbert space properties of classical mechanics, the present formulation is directly concerned with wave packets in configuration space and is thus more similar to that of conventional quantum theory than other extant operator formulations of classical mechanics. Among other things, the following items are discussed for classical systems: Ehrenfest’s theorem, the uncertainty principle, dissipative systems, and field theory.

DOI
10.1119/1.12109

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An operator formulation of classical mechanics is given. Rather than being concerned with Lie algebraic or abstract Hilbert space properties of classical mechanics, the present formulation is directly concerned with wave packets in configuration space and is thus more similar to that of conventional quantum theory than other extant operator formulations of classical mechanics. Among other things, the following items are discussed for classical systems: Ehrenfest’s theorem, the uncertainty principle, dissipative systems, and field theory.
Quantum mechanics (QM) is not just a theory of micro-objects: it is our current fundamental theory of motion. It expresses a deeper understanding of Nature than classical mechanics. Precisely as classical mechanics, the conventional formulation of QM describes evolution of states and observables in time. Precisely as classical mechanics, this is not sufficient to deal with general relativistic systems, because these systems do not describe evolution in time; they describe correlations between observables. Therefore, a formulation of QM slightly more general than the conventional one – or a quantum version of the relativistic classical mechanics discussed in the previous chapter – is needed. In this chapter I discuss the possibility of such a formulation. In the last section I discuss the general physical interpretation of QM. QM can be formulated in a number of more or less equivalent formalisms: canonical (Hilbert spaces and self-adjoint operators), covariant (Feynman's sum-over-histories), algebraic (states as linear functionals over an abstract algebra of observables) and others. Generally, but not always, we are able to translate these formalisms into one another, but often what is easy in one formulation is difficult in another. A generalrelativistic sum-over-histories formalism has been developed by Jim Hartle. Here I focus on the canonical formalism, because the canonical formalism has provided the mathematical completeness and precision needed to explicitly construct the mathematical apparatus of quantum gravity. Later I will consider alternative formalisms.
The algebra of polynomials in operators that represent generalized coordinate and momentum and depend on the Planck constant is defined. The Planck constant is treated as the parameter taking values between zero and some nonvanishing h0h_0h0​. For the second of these two extreme values, introduced operatorial algebra becomes equivalent to the algebra of observables of quantum mechanical system defined in the standard manner by operators in the Hilbert space. For the vanishing Planck constant, the generalized algebra gives the operator formulation of classical mechanics since it is equivalent to the algebra of variables of classical mechanical system defined, as usually, by functions over the phase space. In this way, the semiclassical limit of kinematical part of quantum mechanics is established through the generalized operatorial framework.
The conventional approach to quantum mechanics begins with the classical Hamiltonian and changes observables to non-commuting operators. Generally, the quantum mechanics based on the Schrodinger equation is preferred for a system of particles. But path integral formulation of quantum mechanics finds applications in more complicated situations, particularly, in quantum field theory. The purpose of solving the Schrodinger equation lies in finding the time evolution operator which is able to generate the time translation of the given system. Richard Feynman noticed that it was necessary to perform integrals over all space variables at every instant of time to find the transition amplitudes. Dissipative phenomena with a quantum origin manifest themselves in many different situations and hence the study of dissipative systems and their quantization is of a great theoretical and practical value. Many dissipative systems can be modelled as a linearly damped harmonic oscillator.
Abstract Quantum mechanics is written in the language of linear algebra. On the Schrodinger picture the theory represents quantum-mechanical states using the elements of a Hilbert space and represents observable physical properties and the standard dynamics using the linear operators on the state space. We consider the mathematical notions for understanding and working with the standard formulation of quantum mechanics. Each mathematical notion is characterized geometrically, algebraically, and physically. The mathematical representation of quantum-mechanical superpositions is discussed.
We develop a geometrical approach to Schrödinger quantum mechanics, alternative to the usual one, which is based on linear and algebraic structures such as Hilbert spaces, operator algebras, etc. The starting point of this approach is the Kähler structure possessed by the set of the pure states of a quantum system. The Kähler manifold of the pure states is regarded as a “quantum phase space”, conceptually analogous to the phase space of a classical hamiltonian system, and all the constituents of the conventional formulation, in particular the algebraic structure of the observables, are reproduced using a suitable “Kähler formalism”. We also show that the probabilistic character of the measurement process in quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle are contained in the geometrical structure of the quantum phase space. Finally, we obtain a characterization for quantum phase spaces which can be interpreted as a statement of uniqueness for Schrödinger quantum mechanics.
This chapter deals with the matrix and vector formulation of quantum mechanics. Topics covered under the chapter are: matrices and their basic algebra, bra and ket notations, vector space and the basis vectors, inner and outer products of vectors, the orthogonalization procedure for vectors, the Schwarz inequality, linear transformation of a vector, eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a matrix, numerical methods to find eigenvalue and eigenvector, different types of matrices used in quantum mechanics, diagonalization of a matrix, the Cayley-Hamilton theorem, change of basis in a vector space and the unitary transformations, infinite-dimensional and Hilbert spaces, representation of quantum states and operators in Hilbert space, the Schrödinger equation in matrix form, assumptions of quantum mechanics in matrix formulations, the general uncertainty principle, the one dimensional harmonic oscillator, solved examples and unsolved exercises. The objectives of this chapter are to introduce the important aspects of vector and matrix algebra that have been vital in the development and the description of modern quantum mechanics and in exhibiting that the Heisenberg and Schrödinger approaches to quantum mechanics are equivalent.