Abstract This paper studies coherent quantization, the way operators in the quantum space of a coherent space—defined in the recent book ’Coherent Quantum Mechanics’ by the first author—can be studied in terms of objects defined directly on the coherent space. The results may be viewed as a generalization of geometric quantization, including the non-unitary case. Care has been taken to work with the weakest meaningful topology and to assume as little as possible about the spaces and groups involved. Unlike in geometric quantization, the groups are not assumed to be compact, locally compact, or finite-dimensional. This implies that the setting can be successfully applied to quantum field theory, where the groups involved satisfy none of these properties. The paper characterizes linear operators acting on the quantum space of a coherent space in terms of their coherent matrix elements. Coherent maps and associated symmetry groups for coherent spaces are introduced, and formulas are derived for the quantization of coherent maps. The importance of coherent maps for quantum mechanics is due to the fact that there is a quantization map that associates homomorphically with every coherent map a linear operator from the quantum space into itself. The quantization map generalizes the second quantization procedure for free classical fields to symmetry groups of general coherent spaces. Field quantization is obtained by specialization to Klauder spaces, whose quantum spaces are the bosonic Fock spaces. Implied by the new approach is a short, coordinate-free derivation of all basic properties of creation and annihilation operators in Fock spaces.
It is well known from the work of Berezin [24] (Commun. Math. Phys. 40:153–174, 1975) in 1975 that the quantization problem of a classical mechanical system is closely related with coherent states. In particular coherent states help to understand the limiting behaviour of a quantum system when the Planck constant
ℏ becomes negligible in macroscopic units. This problem is called the semi-classical limit problem. In this chapter we discuss properties of quantum systems when the configuration space is the Euclidean space
Rn. So that in the Hamiltonian formalism, the phase space is
Rn×Rn with its canonical symplectic form
σ. The quantization problem has many solutions, so we choose a convient one, introduced by Weyl [259] (The Classical Groups, 1997) and Wigner [261] (Group Theory and Its Applications to Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra, 1959). We study the symmetries of Weyl quantization, the operationnal calculus and applications to propagation of observables. We show that Wick quantization is a natural bridge between Weyl quantization and coherent states. Applications are given to the semi-classical limit after introducing an efficient modern tool: the semi-classical measures. We illustrate the general results proved in this chapter by explicit computations for the harmonic oscillator. More applications will be given in the following chapters, in particular concerning propagators and trace formulas for a large class of quantum systems.
In accordance with the fact that quantum measurements are described in terms of positive operator measures (POMs), we consider certain aspects of a quantization scheme in which a classical variable
f:R2→R is associated with a unique positive operator measure (POM)
Ef, which is not necessarily projection valued. The motivation for such a scheme comes from the well-known fact that due to the noise in a quantum measurement, the resulting outcome distribution is given by a POM and cannot, in general, be described in terms of a traditional observable, a selfadjoint operator. Accordingly, we notice that the noiseless measurements are the ones which are determined by a selfadjoint operator. The POM
Ef in our quantization is defined through its moment operators, which are required to be of the form
Γ(fk),
k∈N, with
Γ a fixed map from classical variables to Hilbert space operators. In particular, we consider the quantization of classical \emph{questions}, that is, functions
f:R2→R taking only values 0 and 1. We compare two concrete realizations of the map
Γ in view of their ability to produce noiseless measurements: one being the Weyl map, and the other defined by using phase space probability distributions.
The theory of Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics was created (or discovered) back in the 1920's mainly by Schrödinger and Heisenberg, but it is fair enough to say that a more modern and unified approach to the subject was introduced by Dirac and Jordan with their (intrinsic) Transformation Theory. In his famous text book on quantum mechanics [1], Dirac introduced his well-known bra and ket notation and a view that even Einstein (who was, as well known, very critical towards the general quantum physical world-view) considered the most elegant presentation of the theory at that time[2]. One characteristic of this formulation is that the observables of position and momentum are truly treated equally so that an intrinsic phase-space approach seems a natural course to be taken. In fact, we may distinguish at least two different quantum mechanical approaches to the structure of the quantum phase space: The Weyl-Wigner (WW) formalism and the advent of the theory of Coherent States (CS). The Weyl-Wigner formalism has had many applications ranging from the discussion of the Classical/Quantum Mechanical transition and quantum chaos to signal analysis[3,4]. The Coherent State formalism had a profound impact on Quantum Optics and during the course of time has found applications in diverse areas such as geometric quantization, wavelet and harmonic analysis [5]. In this chapter we present a compact review of these formalisms (with also a more intrinsic and coordinate independent notation) towards some non-standard and up-to-date applications such as modular variables and weak values.
Coherent quantum physics is quantum physics in terms of a coherent space and an appropriate coherent product. The kinematical structure and the meaning of the quantities are given by the symmetries (invertible coherent maps) of the coherent space. If Z is a coherent manifold, a canonical symplectic form is often canonically determined by the coherent product through the coherent action principle discussed in Section 6.1. In a quantum mechanical context, Z is indeed a classical phase space or an extended phase space-typically a symplectic manifold, a Poisson manifold, or a circle or line bundle over such a manifold that incorporates the classical action variable (encoding the Berry phase under quantization). For example, the Aharonov-Bohm effect [3] needs the bundle formulation. A coherent space and its quantum space provide a classical and a quantum view of the same physical system, discussed in Section 6.2. Section 6.3 shows that symmetries of coherent spaces can be quantized, that is, promoted to linear operators on the quantum space. This leads to quantum dynamics, which in special (completely integrable) situations can be solved in closed form in terms of classical motions on the underlying coherent space, if the latter has a compatible manifold structure. Close relations to concepts from geometric quantization and Kähler manifolds are pointed out in Section 6.4. In order that the quantum space of a coherent space Z can describe physics, one needs not only a distinguished class of coherent states but a more general concept of state. In Sections 6.5-6.6, we give a general abstract setting for states in Lie ∗-algebras, emphasize the essential mathematical features and the close analogy between classical and quantum physics. We illustrate these generalities with a number of examples in Section 6.7. The coherent action principle is put to use in Section 6.8 for numerical quantum physics and an application to quantum chaos. Spectral issues can, in favorable cases, be handled in terms of dynamical Lie algebras, discussed in Section 6.9.