The distinguishability between pairs of quantum states, as measured by quantum fidelity, is formulated on phase space. The fidelity is physically interpreted as the probability that the pair are mistaken for each other upon an measurement. The mathematical representation is based on the concept of symplectic capacity in symplectic topology. The fidelity is the absolute square of the complex-valued overlap between the symplectic capacities of the pair of states. The symplectic capacity for a given state, onto any conjugate plane of degrees of freedom, is postulated to be bounded from below by the Gromov width h/2. This generalize the Gibbs-Liouville theorem in classical mechanics, which state that the volume of a region of phase space is invariant under the Hamiltonian flow of the system, by constraining the shape of the flow. It is shown that for closed Hamiltonian systems, the Schroedinger equation is the mathematical representation for the conservation of fidelity.
We investigate a three-dimensional ghostly Hamiltonian realisation of the fully degenerate resonant sixth-order Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator. On the classical level, the phase-space flow is non-diagonalisable and decomposes into two complex-conjugate Jordan chains of length three, explaining the appearance of oscillatory solutions with secular terms.
Upon quantisation, we construct intertwining operators whose quadratic combinations generate a hidden spectrum-generating
u(2,1)-algebra. The associated descendant spaces are finite-dimensional invariant subspaces carrying non-trivial Jordan structure. Although these spaces admit a natural decomposition into irreducible modules of a distinguished
sl2-subalgebra, this decomposition does not in general coincide with the Jordan decomposition of the Hamiltonian.
We further derive a tri-Hamiltonian formulation from Lie point symmetries of the classical flow and show that the corresponding Hamiltonians are naturally encoded by the same hidden algebra. Nevertheless, unlike in the non-resonant case, no positive-definite linear combination of them generates the same dynamics. Finally, we analyse the common centraliser of the tri-Hamiltonian family in
U(u(2,1)), showing that the natural higher-order candidate
Q is reducible and yields no independent classical or quantum integral.
The model thus provides a resonant higher-derivative system in which hidden
u(2,1) symmetry, classical and quantum Jordan structures, and multi-Hamiltonian geometry coexist.
We investigate the inverse problem concerning the evolution of a qubit system, specifically we consider how one can establish the Hamiltonians that account for the evolution of a qubit along a prescribed path in the projected Hilbert space. For a given path, there are infinite Hamiltonians which can realize the same evolution. A general form of the Hamiltonians is constructed in which one may select the desired one for implementing a prescribed evolution. This scheme can be generalized to higher dimensional systems.