Displacement operators: the classical face of their quantum phase

DOI10.1088/1361-6404/AA9CA5zbMATH Open1390.81277arXiv1702.01833OpenAlexW2597323270MaRDI QIDQ4634784FDOQ4634784

Authors: Amar C. Vutha, Eliot A. Bohr, Anthony Ransford, Wesley C. Campbell, Paul Hamilton 

Publication date: 11 April 2018

Published in: European Journal of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In quantum mechanics, the operator representing the displacement of a system in position or momentum is always accompanied by a path-dependent phase factor. In particular, two non-parallel displacements in phase space do not compose together in a simple way, and the order of these displacements leads to different displacement composition phase factors. These phase factors are often attributed to the nonzero commutator between quantum position and momentum operators, but such a mathematical explanation might be unsatisfactory to students who are after more physical insight. We present a couple of simple demonstrations, using classical wave mechanics and classical particle mechanics, that provide some physical intuition for the phase associated with displacement operators.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.01833

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zbMATH Keywords

quantum harmonic oscillatorphase spaceclassical mechanics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Selfadjoint operator theory in quantum theory, including spectral analysis (81Q10) Phase-space methods including Wigner distributions, etc. applied to problems in quantum mechanics (81S30) Modal analysis in linear vibration theory (70J10)

Cites Work

• Modern quantum mechanics
• Coherent and incoherent states of the radiation field
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Quantum mechanics as a geometric phase: Phase-space interferometers

Cited In (1)

• Quantum nonlocality in the spin-s Heisenberg models with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction

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