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Journal of Mathematical Physics

Phase-space formalism: Generalized Hermite polynomials, orthogonal functions and creation–annihilation operators

G. Dattoli, A. Torre

Published Apr 1, 1995• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Hermite polynomials with many variables and many indices play a crucial role within the framework of phase-space formulation of classical or quantum mechanics. A generalized operational formalism useful to handle these polynomials is discussed and also a new set of creation–annihilation operators associated to the phase-space harmonic oscillator orthogonal functions is introduced. The Fourier transform of these orthogonal functions is studied by discussing the analogies with the ordinary case. Finally, the integral representation of the generalized Hermite polynomials and a simple technique to deal with the generalized heat equation are discussed.

DOI
10.1063/1.531075

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Quantum optics has been dealing with coherent states, squeezed states and many other non-classical states. The associated mathematical framework makes use of special functions as Hermite polynomials, Laguerre polynomials and others. In this connection we here present some formal results that follow directly from the group O ( N ) of complex transformations. Motivated by the squeezed states structure, we introduce the generalized Hermite polynomials , which include as particular cases, the Hermite polynomials as well as the heat polynomials. Using generalized raising operators, we derive new sum rules for the , which are covariant under O ( N ) transformations. The and the associated sum rules become useful for evaluating Wigner functions in a straightforward manner. As a byproduct, we use one of these sum rules, on the operator level, to obtain raising and lowering operators for the Laguerre polynomials and show that they generate an sl (2, R ) ≃ su (1, 1) algebra.
We show the use of the theory of Lie algebras, especially their oscillator realizations, in the context of quantum mechanics. One can construct oscillator realizations from matrix realizations. In the case of symplectic and special orthogonal algebra, we demonstrate an alternative method of obtaining oscillator realizations from symmetric or exterior power of a vector space of annihilation and creation bosonic or fermionic operators. We find Lie algebra of polynomials of degree at most two in phase space of a mechanical system, which form the semi-direct product of the Heisenberg algebra and symplectic algebra. It is shown that a classical system with Hamiltonian function in this algebra can be quantized by two equivalent representations - Schrödinger or Bargmann-Fock representation. The second mentioned representation generates the same operators of symplectic algebra as we got from their previous formal construction from symmetric power of a vector space of bosonic operators. Quantization is demonstrated on the bosonic harmonic oscillator. We use the similarities between bosonic and fermionic oscillator realizations to define the fermionic harmonic oscillator. Some properties of spinor representations of special orthogonal algebra are illustrated on its state space. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)