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arXiv:quant-ph/9612041

Minimal Irreversible Quantum Mechanics

Mario Castagnino, Laura, Roberto

Published Dec 17, 1996• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

It is demonstrated that, making minimal changes in ordinary quantum mechanics, a reasonable irreversible quantum mechanics can be obtained. This theory has a more general spectral decompositions, with eigenvectors corresponding to unstable states that vanish when $t \to \infty .$ These ''Gamov vectors'' have zero norm, in such a way that the norm and the energy of the physical states remain constant. The evolution operator has no inverse, showing that we are really dealing with a time-asymmetric theory. Using Friedrichs model reasonable physical results are obtained, e. g. : the remaining of an unstable decaying state reappears, in the continuous spectrum of the model, with its primitive energy.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/9612041

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It is demonstrated that, making minimal changes in ordinary quantum mechanics, a reasonable irreversible quantum mechanics can be obtained. This theory has a more general spectral decompositions, with eigenvectors corresponding to unstable states that vanish when t→∞.t \to \infty .t→∞. These ''Gamov vectors'' have zero norm, in such a way that the norm and the energy of the physical states remain constant. The evolution operator has no inverse, showing that we are really dealing with a time-asymmetric theory. Using Friedrichs model reasonable physical results are obtained, e. g. : the remaining of an unstable decaying state reappears, in the continuous spectrum of the model, with its primitive energy.
It is demonstrated that, making minimal changes in ordinary quantum mechanics, a reasonable irreversible quantum mechanics can be obtained. This theory has a more general spectral decomposition, with eigenvectors corresponding to unstable states that vanish when $t\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}.$ These Gamov vectors have zero norm, in such a way that the norm and the energy of the physical states remain constant. The evolution operator has no inverse, showing that we are really dealing with a time-asymmetric theory. Using the Friedrichs model, reasonable physical results are obtained, e.g., the remnant of an unstable decaying state reappears, in the continuous spectrum of the model, with its primitive energy.
The compatibility of irreversibility, as expressed by the second law of thermodynamics, with ordinary quantum mechanics requires an extension of the latter. Such an extension of a reversible formalism is made possible by the presence of self-energy processes (already found in quantum electrodynamics), which allows for the widening of the dynamics through the introduction of specific additional variables leading to the recognition of such processes. A projection technique modeled on that introduced long ago by the Brussels group defines a subdynamics that is shown to contain the starting formulation in its entirety. (It corresponds to a restricted class of initial conditions, namely the reversible ones.) A new kinetic description is obtained in which, e.g., collision processes for privileged components arise from the original interaction. This method is applied successively to various models, and we focus in this paper on the possible presence of temporal behaviour excluded in ordinary quantum mechanics. Among the differences between this framework and that of ordinary quantum mechanics, the possibility appears for the purely exponential decay of a particle, while ordinary quantum mechanics requires long time tails associated with the finite lower bound in the spectrum of the Hamiltonian.
Intrinsic theory of irreversibility In connection with the previous chapter on Wigner–Weisskopf, quantum irreversibility, Gamov states and the Lax–Phillips theory of decay, we shall examine the recent program in statistical mechanics carried forward by Ilya Prigogine and his colleagues since his early book in 1962 (Prigogine, 1962). This discussion is somewhat out of the focus of the present book, since the work to be discussed has principally been devoted to isolated quantum systems, not those in interaction with “reservoirs.” In addition, Prigogine's work is very classical in its content. We shall not attempt the task of reviewing the many changes that have taken place between 1962 and the present. Fine texts describing some of this work are those of Balescu (1963, 1975). A recent critical overview of the “modern view” is in the unpublished thesis of B. C. Bishop of the University of Texas Philosophy Department (Bishop, 1999). In many ways this is related to the use of Gel'fand triplets (Gel'fand and Vilenkin, 1968), mentioned in Chapter 17.6, to describe irreversible quantum states, i.e. Gamov states. See Chapter 17, the book of Bohm and Gadella (1989) and also the more recent review article by Bohm and colleagues (Bohm et al. , 1997). The object in statistical mechanics is to extend the range of the Liouville operator (classical and quantum) such that its eigenvalues are complex and intrinsically irreversible. Statistical mechanics has always been focused on many particle systems and the appearance of a continuum spectrum in the thermodynamic limit, already used in many places in this book. In the classical case Antoniou and Tasaki carried out the adaptation of the Gel'fand triplet approach to the Liouville operator, but this is, apparently, not possible quantum mechanically (Antoniou and Tasaki, 1993). Thus, another route must be taken in what Prigogine has termed, for emphasis, “large Poincaré systems” which have a continuum spectrum (Prigogine, 1997).