The position--momentum correspondence combines several mathematically distinct identifications that are often conflated. For the additive group
(R,+), every continuous character has the form
x↦eikx. After choosing a coordinate
p=αk on the dual group, one obtains
eipx/α, so Pontryagin duality alone does not identify a particular dual coordinate with physical momentum. For the corresponding unitary Fourier transform, multiplication in position space is transported to convolution in momentum space, while the diagonal distribution is transported to the specific composition with the addition map
(p,q)↦p+q; it is not transported to pointwise multiplication in momentum space. The family
P^α=−iαd/dx has commutator
[X^,P^α]=iαI on
S(R), and the standard quantum-mechanical normalization
[X^,P^]=iℏI therefore selects
α=ℏ within this family. Equivalently, the standard normalization of the translation generator gives
P^=−iℏd/dx. The resulting characters
eipx/ℏ have spatial period
h/∣p∣ for
p=0. All distributional statements are formulated in the Schwartz rigging and no product or pullback of arbitrary tempered distributions is used.
A physical theory often admits different mathematical descriptions. Classical mechanics has three familiar formulations: the traditional Newton’s formulation, the Lagrange’s and the Hamilton’s formulations. It is easy to see that these are physically equivalent. Quantum mechanics also admits many different formulations. This chapter discusses how different mathematical descriptions of a probability theory based on a Hilbert space can be physically equivalent. The prescription does not single out a unique Hilbert space nor a unique set of unit vectors and operators for the description of a given quantum system. This non-uniqueness does not matter since operators and unit vectors themselves are not physically measurable quantities. Two different mathematical descriptions of a quantum system are physically equivalent if the unit vectors and selfadjoint operators for the representation of states and observables in the two descriptions are related by a simultaneous unitary transformation.
We consider quantum random walks in an infinite-dimensional phase space constructed using Weyl representation of the coordinate and momentum operators in the space of functions on a Hilbert space which are square integrable with respect to a shift-invariant measure. We study unitary groups of shift operators in the phase space and averaging of such shifts by Gaussian vectors, which form semigroups of self-adjoint contractions: we find conditions for their strong continuity and establish properties of their generators. Significant differences in their properties allow us to show the absence of the Fourier transform as a unitary transformation that implements the unitary equivalence of these compressive semigroups. Next, we prove the Taylor formula for a certain special subset of smooth functions for shifting to a non-finite vector. It allows us to prove convergence of quantum random walks in the coordinate representation to the evolution of a diffusion process, as well as convergence of quantum random walks in both coordinate and momentum representations to the evolution semigroup of a quantum oscillator in an infinite-dimensional phase space. We find the special essential common domain of generators of semigroups arising in averaging of random shift operators both in position and momentum representations. The invariance of this common domain with respect to both semigroups allows to establish properties of a convex combination of both generators. That convex combination are Hamiltonians of infinite-dimentional quantum oscillators. Thus, we obtain that a Weyl representation of a random walk in an infinite dimensional phase space describes the semigroup of self-adjoint contractions whose generator is the Hamiltonian of an infinite dimensional harmonic oscillator.