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Routledge eBooks

Geometric Aspects of Quantum Mechanics

Lane P. Hughston

Published Jul 12, 2017• 22 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This chapter begins with a few remarks indicating briefly the motivation for studying quantum theory from a geometrical point of view, and in particular for the development of a non-linear geometrical quantum theory. It considers the case of an elementary quantum mechanical system consisting of a spin one-half particle in a constant magnetic field. The successes of quantum mechanics have been so wide and varied, that one must be wary of making any gross alteration to the structure of the theory. The connection with twistor theory goes perhaps one level deeper, since the particular geometrical characteristics of quantum theory that emerge as being relevant have to do precisely with the complex analytic structure of the quantum mechanical state manifold. A Kahler manifold can either be regarded as a real Riemannian manifold that is endowed also with a complex structure, or as a complex manifold that is also endowed with a Riemannian structure.

DOI
10.1201/9780203734889-6

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This chapter begins with a few remarks indicating briefly the motivation for studying quantum theory from a geometrical point of view, and in particular for the development of a non-linear geometrical quantum theory. It considers the case of an elementary quantum mechanical system consisting of a spin one-half particle in a constant magnetic field. The successes of quantum mechanics have been so wide and varied, that one must be wary of making any gross alteration to the structure of the theory. The connection with twistor theory goes perhaps one level deeper, since the particular geometrical characteristics of quantum theory that emerge as being relevant have to do precisely with the complex analytic structure of the quantum mechanical state manifold. A Kahler manifold can either be regarded as a real Riemannian manifold that is endowed also with a complex structure, or as a complex manifold that is also endowed with a Riemannian structure.
Quantum mechanics is among the most important and successful mathematical model for describing our physical reality. The traditional formulation of quantum mechanics is linear and algebraic. In contrast classical mechanics is a geometrical and non-linear theory that is defined on a symplectic manifold. However, after invention of general relativity, we are convinced that geometry is physical and effect us in all scale. Hence the geometric formulation of quantum mechanics sought to give a unified picture of physical systems based on its underling geometrical structures, e.g., now, the states are represented by points of a symplectic manifold with a compatible Riemannian metric, the observables are real-valued functions on the manifold, and the quantum evolution is governed by a symplectic flow that is generated by a Hamiltonian function. In this work we will give a compact introduction to main ideas of geometric formulation of quantum mechanics. We will provide the reader with the details of geometrical structures of both pure and mixed quantum states. We will also discuss and review some important applications of geometric quantum mechanics.
In a recent paper it was shown that all the Hilbert space formulas for quantum probabilities can be realized as functions of geometric properties of the associated projective space, but those functions were expressed using the structures of the associated Hilbert space. In this paper a direct description of all these probabilities is given as formulas involving only the geometric properties of the projective space itself without referring to the associated Hilbert space theory. In large part this depends on a projection theorem for complex projective space which is analogous to the projection theorem for Hilbert spaces. The importance of this is that this exhibits quantum probability in terms of the geometry of a Riemannian metric in a non-linear Kähler manifold without any reference to a linear Hilbert space. As such this is a part of a larger program of the geometrization of physics. This opens the possibility of generalizations of quantum theory in other similar geometric settings. The theory presented includes projective spaces of both finite and infinite dimension. Some comments explain how quantum theory based on a von Neumann algebra is compatible with this approach.
In this chapter we study the application of geometric algebra to both nonrelativistic and relativistic quantum mechanics. We concentrate on the quantum theory of spin-1/2 particles, whose dynamics is described by the Pauli and Dirac equations. For interactions where spin and relativity are not important the dynamics reduces to that of the Schrödinger equation. There are many good textbooks describing this topic and we will make no attempt to cover it here. We assume, furthermore, that most readers have a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, and are familiar with the concepts of states and operators. Both the Pauli and Dirac matrices arise naturally as representations of the geometric algebras of space and spacetime. It is no surprise, then, that much of quantum theory finds a natural expression within geometric algebra. To achieve this, however, one must reconsider the standard interpretation of the quantum spin operators. Like much discussion of the interpretation of quantum theory, certain issues raised here are controversial. There is no question about the validity of our algebraic approach, however, and little doubt about its advantages. Whether the algebraic simplifications obtained here are indicative of a deeper structure embedded in quantum mechanics is an open question. In this chapter we only consider the quantum theory of single particles in background fields. Multiparticle systems are considered in the following chapter.
In finite dimension (at least), Quantum Mechanics can be formulated as a proper Hamiltonian theory where a notion of phase space is given by the projective space P(H) constructed on the Hilbert space H of the considered quantum theory. It is well-known P(H) can be equipped with a structure of Kähler manifold, in particular we have a symplectic form and a Poisson structure; Quantum dynamics can be described in terms of a Hamiltonian vector field on P(H). In this paper, exploiting the notion and properties of so-called frame functions, I describe a general prescription for associating quantum observables to real functions on P(H), classical-like observables, and quantum states to probability densities on P(H), Liouville densities, in order to obtain a complete and meaningful Hamiltonian formulation of a finite-dimensional quantum theory.
Duality transformations within the quantum mechanics of a finite number of degrees of freedom can be regarded as the dependence of the notion of a quantum, i.e., an elementary excitation of the vacuum, on the observer on classical phase space. Under an observer we understand, as in general relativity, a local coordinate chart. While classical mechanics can be formulated using a symplectic structure on classical phase space, quantum mechanics requires a complex-differentiable structure on that same space. Complex-differentiable structures on a given real manifold are often not unique. This article is devoted to analysing the dependence of the notion of a quantum on the complex-differentiable structure chosen on classical phase space. For that purpose we consider Kähler phase spaces, endowed with a dynamics whose Hamiltonian equals the local Kähler potential.
Finite-dimensional Quantum Mechanics can be geometrically formulated as a proper classical-like Hamiltonian theory in a projective Hilbert space. The description of composite quantum systems within the geometric Hamiltonian framework is discussed in this paper. As summarized in the first part of this work, in the Hamiltonian formulation the phase space of a quantum system is the Kähler manifold given by the complex projective space P(H) of the Hilbert space H of the considered quantum theory. However the phase space of a bipartite system must be P(H1 ⊗ H2) and not simply P(H1) × P(H2) as suggested by the analogy with Classical Mechanics. A part of this paper is devoted to manage this problem. In the second part of the work, a definition of quantum entanglement and a proposal of entanglement measure are given in terms of a geometrical point of view (a rather studied topic in recent literature). Finally two known separability criteria are implemented in the Hamiltonian formalism.