The commutation properties of the infinitesimal operator variations that are employed in the fundamental dynamical principle are such as to maintain the commutation relations obeyed by the dynamical variables. This chapter examines these special variations possess a transformation group aspect. It discusses a group of inner automorphisms - transformations, constructed from the elements of the algebra that maintain all algebraic relations and Hermitian properties. In constructing transformation functions, one must eliminate explicit reference to the operators of the physical system and express the transformation function in terms of the eigenvalues which, for variables of the second kind, are the elements of the external algebra. Although the integral notation is effective in unifying some of the formal properties of the two classes of variables, the nature of the operations is quite distinct. The symbol ∫ has the significance of differentiation for variables of the second kind, and the inverse of differentiation for variables of the first kind.
The commutation properties of the infinitesimal operator variations that are employed in the fundamental dynamical principle are such as to maintain the commutation relations obeyed by the dynamical variables. This chapter examines these special variations possess a transformation group aspect. It discusses a group of inner automorphisms - transformations, constructed from the elements of the algebra that maintain all algebraic relations and Hermitian properties. In constructing transformation functions, one must eliminate explicit reference to the operators of the physical system and express the transformation function in terms of the eigenvalues which, for variables of the second kind, are the elements of the external algebra. Although the integral notation is effective in unifying some of the formal properties of the two classes of variables, the nature of the operations is quite distinct. The symbol ∫ has the significance of differentiation for variables of the second kind, and the inverse of differentiation for variables of the first kind.
A measurement is a physical operation in space and in time. The properties of a system are described in relation to measurements at a given time, and no value of the time is intrinsically distinguished from another by the results of measurements on an isolated physical system. The operators symbolizing analogous properties at different times must be related by a unitary transformation. The propagation in time of the disturbance produced by a measurement implies that physical quantities referring to different times are incompatible, in general. The development of the fundamental dynamical variables through an infinitesimal time interval is described by an infinitesimal unitary transformation, which implies first order differential equations of motion for these variables. The necessity of an even number of variables and the possibility of dividing them into two complementary sets also appears for variables of the second kind.
The conventional correspondence basis for quantum dynamics is here replaced by a self-contained quantum dynamical principle from which the equations of motion and the commutation relations can be deduced. The theory is developed in terms of the model supplied by localizable fields. A short review is first presented of the general quantum-mechanical scheme of operators and eigenvectors, in which emphasis is placed on the differential characterization of representatives and transformation functions by means of infinitesimal unitary transformations. The fundamental dynamical principle is stated as a variational equation for the transformation function connecting eigenvectors associated with different spacelike surfaces, which describes the temporal development of the system. The generator of the infinitesimal transformation is the variation of the action integral operator, the spacetime volume integral of the invariant lagrange function operator. The invariance of the lagrange function preserves the form of the dynamical principle under coordinate transformations, with the exception of those transformations which include a reversal in the positive sense of time, where a separate discussion is necessary. It will be shown in Sec. III that the requirement of invariance under time reflection imposes a restriction upon the operator properties of fields, which is simply the connection between the spin and statistics of particles. For a given dynamical system, changes in the transformation function arise only from alterations of the eigenvectors associated with the two surfaces, as generated by operators constructed from field variables attached to those surfaces. This yields the operator principle of stationary action, from which the equations of motion are obtained. Commutation relations are derived from the generating operator associated with a given surface. In particular, canonical commutation relations are obtained for those field components that are not restricted by equations of constraint. The surface generating operator also leads to generalized Schr\"odinger equations for the representative of an arbitrary state. Action integral variations which correspond to changing the dynamical system are discussed briefly. A method for constructing the transformation function is described, in a form appropriate to an integral spin field, which involves solving Hamilton-Jacobi equations for ordered operators. In Sec. III, the exceptional nature of time reflection is indicated by the remark that the charge and the energy-momentum vector behave as a pseudoscalar and pseudovector, respectively, for time reflection transformations. This shows, incidentally, that positive and negative charge must occur symmetrically in a completely covariant theory. The contrast between the pseudo energy-momentum vector and the proper displacement vector then indicates that time reflection cannot be described within the unitary transformation framework. This appears most fundamentally in the basic dynamical principle. It is important to recognize here that the contributions to the lagrange function of half-integral spin fields behave like pseudoscalars with respect to time reflection. The non-unitary transformation required to represent time reflection is found to be the replacement of a state vector by its dual, or complex conjugate vector, together with the transposition of all operators. The fundamental dynamical principle is then invariant under time reflection if inverting the order of all operators in the lagrange function leaves an integral spin contribution unaltered, and reverses the sign of a half-integral spin contribution. This implies the essential commutativity, or anti-commutativity, of integral and half-integral field components, respectively, which is the connection between spin and statistics.
Quantum canonical transformations of the second kind and the non-Hermitian realizations of the basic canonical commutation relations are investigated with a special interest in the generalization of the conventional ladder operators. The operator ordering problem is shown to be resolved when the non-Hermitian realizations for the canonical variables that cannot be measured simultaneously with the energy are chosen for the canonical quantizations. Another merit of the non-Hermitian representation is that it naturally allows us to introduce the generalized ladder operators with which one can solve eigenvalue problems quite neatly. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
Continuing the line of development of Paper I [J. Math. Phys. 15, 1295 (1974)], we enlarge the concept of canonical transformations in quantum mechanics in two directions: first, by allowing the definition of a canonical transformation to be made through the preservation of an so(2,1) algebra, rather than the usual Heisenberg algebra, and providing the bridge between the classical and quantum mechanical descriptions, and, second, through the complexification of the transformation group. In this paper we study specifically the transformations which can be interpreted as the radial part of n-dimensional complex linear transformations in Paper I. We show that we can build Hilbert spaces of analytic functions with a scalar product defined through integration over half the complex plane of a variable which has the meaning of a complex radius. A unitary mapping to the ordinary Hilbert space Lrn−12(0,∞) is provided with a kernel involving a Bessel function. Special cases of this are shown to be the Barut-Girardello, one-dimensional Bargmann and Hankel transforms. The transform kernels provide a series of representations of a subsemigroup of SL(2,C) and allow the construction of coherent states for the harmonic oscillator with an extra centrifugal force. We present a hyperdifferential operator realization of these transforms which yields new Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff and special function relations.
This thesis is concerned with the properties of dynamical systems with Hamiltonians which are general quadratic combinations of classical or quantum canonical variables or of Boson or Fermion annihilation and creation operators.Chapter I, consisting of six sections, deals mainly with sets of canonical forms for quadratic Hamiltonians under the action of the group of linear canonical transformations.By viewing the group of C.C.R.Bogoliubov transformations as Sp(2tf, i?) , a full set of canonical Boson Hamiltonians, labelled by the invariants for symplectic conjugacy classes, is obtained.Since the conjugacy class of a real orthogonal matrix is determined by its eigenvalues, there is only one type of canonical form for quadratic Fermion Hamiltonians.Unlike the Fermion case, indefinite Boson Hamiltonians can not in general be reduced to a sum of quasi-particle number operators.However, it is shown how spectral theory in Krein space rigorizes the full reduction of a strictly positive quadratic Boson Hamiltonian for which the single particle space is infinite dimensional.In the case of infinite degrees of freedom, there are various existence criteria for a unitary operator which implements a given Bogoliubov transformation and the equivalence of these is discussed in Section 6.Cahpter II, consisting of seven sections, applies the techniques of Chapter I to algebraic quantization.The Boson commutation relations , among formal mode operators obtained in heuristic quantization, are shown to be incompatible with the canonical commutation relations among conjugate variables unless the motion is stable.Segal quantization of any real
The classical system is usually quantized using the canonical formalism, i.e., in the language of coordinates and momenta. In addition to this “purely algebraic” ambiguity, there is also an ambiguity in the choice of realization of the operators p^ and q^: the commutation relations do not determine it uniquely, but up to a unitary equivalence (the well known uniqueness theorem of von Neumann pertains only to the Weyl form of the commutation relations). The realization must be chosen on the basis of additional considerations regarding the nature of the canonical variables p and q. In this book the term “theory” is used in various ways: in a broad sense (quantum field theory, relativistic theory) and in a narrow sense, to refer to a particular system or class of systems with certain dynamics. In quantum theory there are also systems whose operators corresponding to canonical variables satisfy not commutation relations, but anticommutation relations.