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Features of Moyal Trajectories

Nuno Costa Dias, João Nuno Prata

Published Apr 22, 2006• 14 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We study the Moyal evolution of the canonical position and momentum variables. We compare it with the classical evolution and show that, contrary to what is commonly found in the literature, the two dynamics do not coincide. We prove that this divergence is quite general by studying Hamiltonians of the form $p^2 /2m + V(q)$. Several alternative formulations of Moyal dynamics are then suggested. We introduce the concept of starfunction and use it to reformulate the Moyal equations in terms of a system of ordinary differential equations on the noncommutative Moyal plane. We then use this formulation to study the semiclassical expansion of Moyal trajectories, which is cast in terms of a (order by order in $\\hbar$) recursive hierarchy of i) first order partial differential equations as well as ii) systems of first order ordinary differential equations. The latter formulation is derived independently for analytic Hamiltonians as well as for the more general case of smooth local integrable ones. We present various examples illustrating these results.

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Brazilian Journal of Physics•Jun 1, 2005•14 citations
We study the Moyal evolution of the canonical position and momentum variables. We compare it with the classical evolution and show that, contrary to what is commonly found in the literature, the two dynamics do not coincide. We prove that this divergence is quite general by studying Hamiltonians of the form p2/2m+V(q)p^2 /2m + V(q)p2/2m+V(q). Several alternative formulations of Moyal dynamics are then suggested. We introduce the concept of starfunction and use it to reformulate the Moyal equations in terms of a system of ordinary differential equations on the noncommutative Moyal plane. We then use this formulation to study the semiclassical expansion of Moyal trajectories, which is cast in terms of a (order by order in hbar\\hbarhbar) recursive hierarchy of i) first order partial differential equations as well as ii) systems of first order ordinary differential equations. The latter formulation is derived independently for analytic Hamiltonians as well as for the more general case of smooth local integrable ones. We present various examples illustrating these results.
The Moyal description of quantum mechanics, based on the Wigner-Weyl isomorphism between operators and symbols, provides a comprehensive phase space representation of dynamics. The Weyl symbol image of the Heisenberg picture evolution operator is regular in ħ and so presents a preferred foundation for semiclassical analysis. Its semiclassical expansion "coefficients," acting on symbols that represent observables, are simple, globally defined (phase space) differential operators constructed in terms of the classical flow. The first of two presented methods introduces a cluster-graph expansion for the symbol of an exponentiated operator, which extends Groenewold′s formula for the Weyl product of two symbols and has ħ as its natural small parameter. This Poisson bracket based cluster expansion determines the Jacobi equations for the semiclassical expansion of "quantum trajectories." Their Green function solutions construct the regular ħ ⇓ 0 asymptotic series for the Heisenberg-Weyl evolution map. The second method directly substitutes such a series into the Moyal equation of motion and determines the ħ coefficients recursively. In contrast to the WKB approximation for propagators, the Heisenberg-Weyl description of evolution involves no essential singularity in ħ, no Hamilton-Jacobi equation to solve for the action, and no multiple trajectories, caustics, or Maslov indices.
We formulate various semiclassical propagators for the Wigner phase space representation from a unified point of view. As is shown in several studies, the Moyal equation, which is an equation of motion for the Wigner distribution function, can be regarded as the Schrödinger equation of an extended Hamiltonian system where its "position" and "momentum" correspond to the middle point of two points of the original phase space and the difference between them, respectively. Then we show that various phase-space semiclassical propagators can be formulated just by applying existing semiclassical propagators to the extended system. As a result, a phase space version of the Van Vleck propagator, the initial-value Van Vleck propagator, the Herman-Kluk propagator, and the thawed Gaussian approximation are obtained. In addition, we numerically compare the initial-value phase-space Van Vleck propagator, the phase-space Herman-Kluk propagator, and the classical mechanical propagation as approximation methods for the time propagation of the Wigner distribution function in terms of both accuracy and convergence speed. As a result, we find that the convergence speed of the Van Vleck propagator is far slower than others as is the case of the Hilbert space, and the Herman-Kluk propagator keeps its accuracy for a long period compared with the classical mechanical propagation while the convergence speed of the latter is faster than the former.
We investigate the possibility that the semiclassical limit of quantum mechanics might be correctly described by a classical dynamical theory, other than standard classical mechanics. Using a set of classicality criteria proposed in a related paper, we show that the time evolution of a set of quantum initial data satisfying these criteria is fully consistent with the predictions of a new theory of classical dynamics. The dynamical structure of the new theory is given by the Moyal bracket. This is a Lie bracket that was first derived as the dynamical structure of the Moyal-Weyl-Wigner formulation of quantum mechanics. We present a new derivation of the Moyal bracket, this time in the context of the semiclassical limit of quantum mechanics and thus prove that both classical and quantum dynamics can be formulated in terms of the same canonical structure.
Inspired by a recent work that proposes using coherent states to evaluate the Feynman kernel in noncommutative space, we provide an independent formulation of the path-integral approach for quantum mechanics on the Moyal plane, with the transition amplitude defined between two coherent states of mean position coordinates. In our approach, we invoke solely a representation of the noncommutative algebra in terms of commutative variables. The kernel expression for a general Hamiltonian was found to contain Gaussian-like damping terms, and it is non-perturbative in the sense that it does not reduce to the commutative theory in the limit of vanishing θ—the noncommutative parameter. As an example, we studied the free particle's propagator which turned out to be oscillating with period being the product of its mass and θ. Further, it satisfies the Pauli equation for a charged particle with its spin aligned to a constant, orthogonal B field in the ordinary Landau problem, thus providing an interesting evidence of how noncommutativity can induce spin-like effects at the quantum mechanical level.
We present a general procedure for obtaining equations of motion for the Wigner distribution of functions that are governed by ordinary and partial differential equations. For the case of fields we show that in general one must consider Wigner distribution of the four variables, position, momentum, time and frequency. We also show that in general one cannot write an equation of motion for position and momentum however it can be done in some cases, the Schrodinger equation being one such case. Our method leads to an equation of motion for the Schrodinger equation with time dependent potentials in contrast to the result obtained by Wigner and Moyal which was for time independent potentials.
We are interested in the similarities and differences between the quantum-classical (Q-C) and the noncommutative-commutative (NC-Com) correspondences. As one useful platform to address this issue we derive the superstar Wigner-Moyal equation for noncommutative quantum mechanics (NCQM). A superstar *-product combines the usual phase space * star and the noncommutative * star-product. Having dealt with subtleties of ordering present in this problem we show that the Weyl correspondence of the NC Hamiltonian has the same form as the original Hamiltonian, but with a non-commutativity parameter theta-dependent, momentum-dependent shift in the coordinates. Using it to examine the classical and the commutative limits, we find that there exist qualitative differences between these two limits. Specifically, if q ¹ 0 there is no classical limit. Classical limit exists only if q ® 0 at least as fast as h ->0, but this limit does not yield Newtonian mechanics, unless the limit of theta/h vanishes as q ® 0. For another angle towards this issue we formulate the NC version of the continuity equation both from an explicit expansion in orders of theta and from a Noether's theorem conserved current argument. We also examine the Ehrenfest theorem in the NCQM context.