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Proceedings of Frontiers of Fundamental Physics 14 — PoS(FFP14)

Quantum Indeterminacy, Gauge Symmetries and Symplectic Reduction

Gabriel Catren

Published Sep 15, 2016• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

As a consequence of Heisenberg indeterminacy principle, quantum states are defined by half the number of variables required in classical mechanics.The main claim of this paper is that this "reduction" in the number of variables required to completely describe a physical system can be understood as a consequence of the same formalism underlying the reduction procedure used in gauge theories, namely the Mardsen-Weinstein symplectic reduction.This fact points towards a gauge-theoretical interpretation of the indeterminacy principle in quantum mechanics.

DOI
10.22323/1.224.0207

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As a consequence of Heisenberg indeterminacy principle, quantum states are defined by half the number of variables required in classical mechanics.The main claim of this paper is that this "reduction" in the number of variables required to completely describe a physical system can be understood as a consequence of the same formalism underlying the reduction procedure used in gauge theories, namely the Mardsen-Weinstein symplectic reduction.This fact points towards a gauge-theoretical interpretation of the indeterminacy principle in quantum mechanics.
Abstract. We argue that the classical description of a symplectic manifold endowed with a Hamil-tonian action of an abelian Lie group G and the corresponding quantum theory can be understood as different aspects of the unitary representation theory of G. To do so, we propose a conceptual analysis of formal tools coming from symplectic geometry (notably, Souriau’s moment map and the Mardsen-Weinstein symplectic reduction formalism) and group representation theory (notably Kirillov’s orbit method). The proposed argumentative line strongly relies on the conjecture pro-posed by Guillemin and Sternberg according to which “quantization commutes with (symplectic) reduction”. By using the generalization of this conjecture to non-zero coadjoint orbits, we argue that phase invariance in quantum mechanics and gauge invariance have a common geometric un-derpinning, namely the symplectic reduction formalism. This fact points towards a gauge-theoretic interpretation of Heisenberg indeterminacy principle. Key words: quantum mechanics; gauge theories; moment map; symplectic reduction. 1.
We propose the conjecture according to which the fact that quantum me-chanics does not admit sharp value attributions to both members of a com-plementary pair of observables can be understood in the light of the symplec-tic reduction of phase space in constrained Hamiltonian systems. In order to unpack this claim, we propose a quantum ontology based on two inde-pendent postulates, namely the phase postulate and the quantum postulate. The phase postulate generalizes the gauge correspondence between first-class constraints and gauge transformations to the observables of unconstrained Hamiltonian systems. The quantum postulate specifies the relationship be-tween the numerical values of the observables that permit us to individualize a physical system and the symmetry transformations generated by the oper-ators associated to these observables. We argue that the quantum postulate and the phase postulate are formally implemented by the two independent stages of the geometric quantization of a symplectic manifold, namely the prequantization formalism and the election of a polarization of pre-quantum states respectively.
Abstract It is often claimed that quantum mechanics entails that there is indeterminacy in the world, in the sense that physical systems can lack a precise value for a property. Indeed, a radical form of indeterminacy, in which systems have almost none of the properties we normally attribute to them, can be shown to follow from a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics—the bare theory. However, the bare theory is shown to be incoherent. Still, a more limited form of indeterminacy can be located in spontaneous collapse, hidden variables, and many-worlds theories. This indeterminacy is unlike that which arises classically, having nothing to do with ordinary forms of vagueness or the composition of large objects out of smaller parts. Indeterminacy in quantum mechanics can perhaps be avoided, but there seems little reason to do so.
This chapter discusses the mathematical formalism of the theory of quantum mechanics and present the differences between the theory of classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. The mathematics that is used to account for the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics renders the mathematical approach of quantum mechanics distinct from that of classical mechanics. In quantum mechanics, any dynamical variable that is an observable that can be measured experimentally is described as a linear Hermitian operator. In quantum mechanics, it is not only necessary to define an observable, but it is also necessary to define the states associated with it. When a system is in a linear superposition of states of an observable, the number of different values of an observable observed in an experiment is equal to the number of states that a quantum mechanical system can jump into upon measurement of an observable.
We show that in the opposition to a rather common opinion quantum mechanics is not complete. It is possible to introduce so called hidden variable — in our model classical fields — and combine the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics with deterministic dynamics of those hidden variables. Quantum mechanics can be considered as an approximative description of physical processes based on neglecting by quantities of the magnitude o(α), where α is the dispersion of fluctuations of the Gaussian background field. In this paper we present the detailed presentation of theory of infinite‐dimensional phase space and derive main equations of quantum mechanics (e.g., Schrödinger’s equation, Heisenberg’s equation and von Neumann equation) from the Hamilton equation on the infinite‐dimensional symplectic space. We emphasize (to escape misunderstanding) that our paper is not about quantization of systems with infinite number of degrees of freedom, but about representation of quantum systems as classical systems with infinite number of degrees of freedom. We also investigate the purely mathematical problem of preserving of the dispersion of Gaussian fluctuations by Hamiltonian flows.
A hidden gauge theory structure of quantum mechanics which is invisible in its conventional formulation is uncovered. Quantum mechanics is shown to be equivalent to a certain Yang-Mills theory with an infinite-dimensional gauge group and a nondynamical connection. It is defined over an arbitrary symplectic manifold which constitutes the phase-space of the system under consideration. The ''matter fields'' are local generalizations of states and observables: they assume values in a family of local Hilbert spaces (and their tensor products) which are attached to the points of phase-space. Under local frame rotations they transform in the spinor representation of the metaplectic group Mp(2N), the double covering of Sp(2N). The rules of canonical quantization are replaced by two independent postulates with a simple group theoretical and differential geometrical interpretation. A novel background-quantum split symmetry plays a central role. (orig.)