Fermionic Wave Functions on Unordered Configurations

Authors Sheldon Goldstein, James Taylor, Roderich Tumulka, Nino Zanghì

Publication date 14 March 2014

Abstract: Quantum mechanical wave functions of N identical fermions are usually represented as anti-symmetric functions of ordered configurations. Leinaas and Myrheim proposed how a fermionic wave function can be represented as a function of unordered configurations, which is desirable as the ordering is artificial and unphysical. In this approach, the wave function is a cross-section of a particular Hermitian vector bundle over the configuration space, which we call the fermionic line bundle. Here, we provide a justification for Leinaas and Myrheim's proposal, that is, a justification for regarding cross-sections of the fermionic line bundle as equivalent to anti-symmetric functions of ordered configurations. In fact, we propose a general notion of equivalence of two quantum theories on the same configuration space; it is based on specifying a quantum theory as a triple

(m a t h s c r H, H, Q)

(``quantum triple) consisting of a Hilbert space $m a t h s c r H$ , a Hamiltonian $H$ , and a family of position operators (technically, a projection-valued measure on configuration space acting on $m a t h s c r H$ ).

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