Mass operator and dynamical implementation of mass superselection rule

DOI10.1007/S00023-012-0197-5MaRDI QIDQ1949805zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Eleonora Annigoni, Valter Moretti

Publication date 17 May 2013

Published in Annales Henri Poincaré (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.1372

zbMATH Keywords

central extensionsuperselection rulemass operatorquantum mechanical systemde-coherenceGalileian invariance

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of group representations to physics and other areas of science (20C35) General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05) Selfadjoint operator theory in quantum theory, including spectral analysis (81Q10) Finite-dimensional groups and algebras motivated by physics and their representations (81R05)

Abstract: We start reviewing Giulini's dynamical approach to Bargmann superselection rule proposing some improvements. We discuss some general features of the central extensions of the Galileian group used in Giulini's programme, focussing on the interplay of classical and quantum picture, without making any particular choice for the multipliers. Preserving other features of Giulini's approach, we modify the mass operator of a Galilei invariant quantum system to obtain a mass spectrum that is positive and discrete, giving rise to a standard (non-continuous) superselection rule. The model is invariant under time reversal but a further degree of freedom appears, interpreted as an internal conserved charge. (However, adopting a POVM approach a positive mass operator arises without assuming the existence of such a charge.) The effectiveness of Bargmann rule is shown to be equivalent to an averaging procedure over the unobservable degrees of freedom of the central extension of Galileo group. Moreover, viewing the Galileian invariant quantum mechanics as a non-relativistic limit, we prove that the above-mentioned averaging procedure giving rise to Bargmann superselection rule is nothing but an effective de-coherence phenomenon due to time evolution if assuming that real measurements includes a temporal averaging procedure. It happens when the added term $M{c}^2$ is taken in the due account in the Hamiltonian operator since, in the dynamical approach, the mass $M$ is an operator and cannot be trivially neglected as in classical mechanics. The presented results are quite general and rely upon the only hypothesis that the mass operator has point-wise spectrum. These results explicitly show the interplay of the period of time of the averaging procedure, the energy content of the considered states, and the minimal difference of the mass operator eigenvalues.

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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4049907 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3719745 (Why is no real title available?)
• On Galilei invariance in quantum mechanics and the Bargmann superselection rule
• On unitary ray representations of continuous groups
• Operational Quantum Physics

Cited in

(3)

• MASS OPERATOR OF THE INTERACTING ELECTRONS IN FORMALISM OF PERMUTATION GROUP THEORY
• Spontaneously broken mass
• From Bargmann's superselection rule to quantum Newtonian spacetime

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