Displacement operators: the classical face of their quantum phase

DOI10.1088/1361-6404/AA9CA5MaRDI QIDQ4634784zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

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)

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

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)

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.

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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3082267 (Why is no real title available?)
• Coherent and incoherent states of the radiation field
• Modern quantum mechanics
• 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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