The degree of chaos in the simplest interacting boson model (IBM-1) is compared with what we call the ``dynamical symmetry content'' of the system. The latter is represented by the information entropy of the eigenfunctions with respect to bases associated with dynamical symmetries of the IBM-1, and expresses thus the localization of actual eigenfunctions in these symmetry bases. The wave-function entropy is shown to be a sensitive tool for monitoring the processes of a single dynamical symmetry breaking or transitions between two and more symmetries. For the IBM-1 Hamiltonians studied here, the known features related to chaos, namely, the dependence of chaotic measures on the Hamiltonian parameters (position in the Casten triangle) and on the angular momentum, turn out to be correlated with the behavior of the wave-function entropy.
We analyze the occurrence of dynamically equivalent Hamiltonians in the parameter space of general many-body interactions for quantum systems, particularly those that conserve the total number of particles. As an illustration of the general framework, the appearance of parameter symmetries in the interacting boson model 1 and their absence in the Ginocchio
SO8 fermionic model are discussed.
Symmetry in quantum mechanicsRoughly speaking, a symmetry of some mathematical object is an invertible transformation that leaves all relevant structure as it is.Thus a symmetry of a set is just a bijection (as sets have no further structure, whence invertibility is the only demand on a symmetry), a symmetry of a topological space is a homeomorphism, a symmetry of a Banach space is a linear isometric isomorphism, and, crucially important for this chapter, a symmetry of a Hilbert space H is a unitary operator, i.e., a linear map u : H → H satisfying one and hence all of the following equivalent conditions:• u is invertible and preserves the inner product, i.e., uϕ, uψ = ϕ, ψ (ϕ, ψ ∈ H).The discussion of symmetries in quantum physics is based on the above idea, but the mathematically obvious choices need not be the physically relevant ones.Even in elementary quantum mechanics, where A = B(H), i.e., the C*-algebra of all bounded operators on some Hilbert space H, the concept of a symmetry is already diverse.The main structures whose symmetries we shall study in this chapter are:1.The normal pure state space P 1 (H), i.e., the set of one-dimensional projections on H, with transition probability τ : P 1 (H) × P 1 (H) → [0, 1] defined by (2.44).2. The normal state space D(H), i.e. the convex set of density operators ρ on H. The self-adjoint operators B(H)sa on H, seen as a Jordan algebra (see below).4. The effects E (H) = [0, 1] B(H) , seen as a convex partially ordered set (poset). 5.The projections P(H) on H, seen as an orthocomplemented lattice.6.The unital commutative C*-subalgebras C (B(H)) of B(H), seen as a poset.Each of these structures comes with its own notion of a symmetry, but the main point of this chapter will be to show these notions are equivalent, corresponding in all cases to either unitary or-surprisingly-anti-unitary operators, both merely defined up to a phase.The latter subtlety will open the world of projective unitary group representation to quantum mechanics (without which the existence of spin-1 2 particles such as electrons, and therewith also of ourselves, would be impossible).
Advances in the study of relativistic quantum phase space have established the set of Linear Canonical Transformations (LCTs) as a candidate for the fundamental symmetry group associated with relativistic quantum physics. In this framework, for a spacetime of signature
(N+,N−), the symmetry of the relativistic quantum phase space is described by the LCT group, isomorphic to the symplectic Lie group
Sp(2N+,2N−), which preserves the canonical commutation relations (CCRs) and treats spacetime coordinates and momenta operators on an equal footing. In this work, we investigate the contraction structure of the Lie algebra associated with the LCT group for signature
(1,4), clarifying how familiar spacetime symmetry groups emerge from this more fundamental quantum phase space symmetry. Using the Inönü-Wigner group contraction formalism, we examine each limit case corresponding to the possible combinations of asymptotic values of two fundamental length scale parameters associated with the theory, namely a minimum length
ℓ and a maximum length
L, which may be identified respectively with the Planck length and the de Sitter radius. We explicitly analyze how contractions of the LCT Lie algebra lead to the physically relevant de Sitter algebra
so(1,4) and, in the flat-curvature limit, to the Poincaré algebra
iso(1,3) of four-dimensional spacetime. This provides an explicit mechanism through which relativistic spacetime symmetry can emerge from a deeper symplectic structure of quantum phase space.