Phase operator problem and macroscopic extension of quantum mechanics (Q1290411): Difference between revisions

The paper is about a new quantization of the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator. The usual (separable) Hilbert space \(\mathcal{H}\) is embedded in a larger (inseparable) Hilbert space \(\widehat{\mathcal{D}}\) and some of the Hermitian operators in \(\widehat{\mathcal{D}}\) are considered as ``new observables''. The Hermitian operators in \(\mathcal{H}\) can be extended to Hermitian operators in \(\widehat{\mathcal{D}}\) and in this sense the ``old observables'' are also ``new observables''. The main result claims that there exists a new observable \(\widehat{\phi}_\mathcal{D}\) on \(\widehat{\mathcal{D}}\) which has the properties of the phase operator, proposed as a hypothesis by P. Dirac. The importance of this result comes from the fact that Dirac's phase operator does not exist in \(\mathcal{H}\). The quantum statistics generated from \(\widehat{\phi}_\mathcal{D}\) and the states in \(\widehat{\mathcal{D}}\ominus\mathcal{H}\) coincide ``up to infinitesimals'' with the statistics which is expected to get from the classical limits of the quantum states in \(\mathcal{H}\) (if such classical limits exist). The new Hilbert space \(\widehat{\mathcal{D}}\) is constructed as a factor space of \(\mathcal{D}\), where \(\mathcal{D}\) is a hyperfinite-dimensional vector space between \(\mathcal{H}\) and \(^*\mathcal{H}\), where \(^*\mathcal{H}\) is a nonstandard extension of \(\mathcal{H}\) in the framework of A. Robinson's nonstandard analysis.