We consider an open quantum system which contains unstable states. The time evolution of the system can be described by an effective non-hermitian Hamiltonian H_{eff}, in accord with the Wigner--Weisskopf approximation, and an additional term of the Lindblad form, the socalled dissipator. We show that, after enlarging the original Hilbert space by states which represent the decay products of the unstable states, the non-hermitian part of H_{eff} --the ``particle decay''-- can be incorporated into the dissipator of the enlarged space via a specific Lindblad operator. Thus the new formulation of the time evolution on the enlarged space has a hermitian Hamiltonian and is probability conserving. The equivalence of the new formulation with the original one demonstrates that the time evolution which is governed by a non-hermitian Hamiltonian and a dissipator of the Lindblad form is nevertheless completely positive, just as systems with hermitian Hamiltonians.
This work discusses Hermitian and non-Hermitian formulations for the time evolution of quantum decay, that involve respectively, continuum wave functions and resonant states, to show that they lead to an identical description for a large class of well behaved potentials. Our approach is based on the analytical properties of the outgoing Green's function to the problem in the complex wave number plane.
An analytical solution to the time evolution of decay of one and two identical noninteracting particles is presented using the formalism of resonant states. It is shown that the time-dependent wave function and hence the survival and nonescape probabilities for the initial state of a single particle and entangled symmetric and antisymmetric initial states of two identical particles evolve in a distinctive form along the exponential and long-time nonexponential decaying regimes. In particular, for the last regime, they exhibit different inverse power of time behaviors.
A phase space formulation of the filtering process upon an incident quantum state is developed. This formulation can explain the results of both quantum interference and delayed-choice experiments without making use of the controversial wave-particle duality. Quantum particles are seen as localized and indivisible concentrations of energy and/or mass, their probability amplitude in phase space being described by the Wigner distribution function. The wave or particle nature appears in experiments in which the interference term of the Wigner distribution function is present or absent, respective…
A Lagrangian description is presented which can be used in conjunction with particle interpretations of quantum mechanics. A special example of such an interpretation is the well-known Bohm model. The Lagrangian density introduced here also contains a potential for guiding the particle. The advantages of this description are that the field equations and the particle equations of motion can both be deduced from a single Lagrangian density expression and that conservation of energy and momentum are assured. After being developed in a general form, this Lagrangian formulation is then applied to t…
The Wigner-Weyl transform and phase space formulation of a density matrix approach are applied to a non-Hermitian model which is quadratic in positions and momenta. We show that in the presence of a quantum environment or reservoir, mean lifetime and decay constants of quantum systems do not necessarily take arbitrary values, but could become functions of energy eigenvalues and have a discrete spectrum. It is demonstrated also that a constraint upon mean lifetime and energy appears, which is used to derive the resonance conditions at which long-lived states occur. The latter indicate that quan…
We find a quantum mechanical formulation of proper time for spin 1/2 particles within the framework of the Dirac theory. It is shown that an operator corresponds to the rate of the proper time and that the operator contains terms which oscillate with a very high frequency. We deduce, as an effect of these terms, the existence of an interference between the magnetic field and the rate of proper time. There is a possibility that the conclusion derived in this letter has some implications for astrophysics.
For a free falling particle moving in a media which has quadratic velocity force effect on the particle, two equivalent constants of motion, with units of energy, two Lagrangians, and two Hamiltonians are deduced. These quantities describe the dynamics of the same classical system. However, their quantization and the associated statistical mechanics (for an ensemble of particles) describe two completely different quantum and statistical systems. This is shown at first order in the dissipative parameter.
Simulations of the observed transition rate (decay rate) versus time for excited-state decay in Everett's relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics and DeWitt-like extension of Everett's formulation are described. It is shown that Everett's formalism is not general enough to describe excited-state decay, and that tritium lifetime measurements rule out all plausible DeWitt-like extensions. Furthermore, comparison of lifetime measurements and first-principles calculations of excited electronic states of simple atoms limit Everett-like extensions to a small effect for these atoms.
An extension of the classical action principle obtained in the framework of the gauge transformations, is used to describe the motion of a particle. This extension assigns many, but not all, paths to a particle. Properties of the particle paths are shown to impart wave like behaviour to a particle in motion and to imply various other assumptions and conjectures attributed to the formalism of Quantum Mechanics. The Klein-Gordon and other similar equations are derived by incorporating these properties in the path-integral formalism.
In a recent work [8], we have described a formulation of a model quantum field theory in terms of a multi-time wave function and proposed a suitable system of multi-time Schroedinger equations governing the evolution of that wave function. Here, we provide further evidence that multi-time wave functions provide a viable formulation of relevant quantum field theories by describing a multi-time formulation, analogous to the one in [8], of another model quantum field theory. This model involves three species of particles, say x-particles, anti-x-particles, and y-particles, and postulates that a y…
The five laws of relativistic quantum mechanics, according to Feynman's path integral formulation, are concisely stated and applied to experiments. Reflection diffraction grating experiments for both photons and electrons are analysed, in particular the Davisson-Germer experiment in which the wave-like property of electrons was first established. It is shown how classical, purely spatial, effective wave theories for both photons and electrons are predicted by the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics. The standard Copenhagen interpretation of wave mechanics is critically discussed in …
We show that a short-time regime, in which a deviation from the exponential decay law occurs, exists also in the framework of a superrenormalizable relativistic quantum field theory. This, in turn, implies the possibility of a quantum Zeno effect also for elementary decays. The attention is then focused on the typical order of magnitude of strong decay rates of mesons: for these particles, strong deviations from the exponential decay law are present during a period of time comparable with their mean life time. As a concrete example, the case of the $ρ$ meson is studied.
Physical path integral formulation of motion of particles in Riemannian spaces is outlined and extended to deduce the corresponding field theoretical formulation. For the special case of a zero rest mass particle in Minkowski manifold, it is shown that the underlying space can be reduced to three-dimensional while similar formulation for a massive particle requires a four-dimensional structure. The solutions obtained by the present procedure are compared with the results obtained from its counterpart for a massive particle by setting the mass equal to zero. Although similar, the present formul…
By using an exact analytical non-Hermitian approach in terms of resonance (quasinormal) states we express the decaying wave function as the sum of exponential and nonexponential decaying solutions to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. We show that the exponential-nonexponential transition of decay at long times represents physically a process of interference in time domain of the decaying particle with itself.
In its standard formulation, quantum backflow is a classically impossible phenomenon in which a free quantum particle in a positive-momentum state exhibits a negative probability current. Recently, Miller et al. [Quantum 5, 379 (2021)] have put forward a new, "experiment-friendly" formulation of quantum backflow that aims at extending the notion of quantum backflow to situations in which the particle's state may have both positive and negative momenta. Here, we investigate how the experiment-friendly formulation of quantum backflow compares to the standard one when applied to a free particle i…
In the pilot-wave theory of quantum mechanics particles have definite positions and velocities and the system evolves deterministically. The velocity of a particle is determined by the wave function of the system (the guidance equation) and the wave function evolves according to Schrodinger's equation. In this paper I first construct a Hamiltonian that gives Schrodinger's equation and the guidance equation for the particle. I then find the Hamiltonian for a relativistic particle in Dirac's theory and for a quantum scalar field.
In a series of essays, beginning with this article, we are going to develop a new formulation of micro-phenomena based on the principles of reality and causality. The new theory provides with us a new depiction of micro-phenomena assuming an unified concept of information, matter and energy. So, we suppose that in a definite micro-physical context (including other interacting particles), each particle is enfolded by a probability field whose existence is contingent upon the existence of the particle, but it can locally affect the physical status of the particle in a context-dependent manner. T…
We study Barut's covariant equations describing the electromagnetic interactions between N spin-1/2 particles. In the covariant formulation each particle is described by a Dirac spinor. It is assumed that the interactions between the particles are not mediated by a bosonic field (direct interactions). Within this formulation, using the Lagrangian formalism, we derive the approximate (semirelativistic) Breit equation for two interacting spin-1/2 particles.
Recently a new formulation of quantum mechanics has been introduced, based on signed classical field-less particles interacting with an external field by means of only creation and annihilation events. In this paper, we extend this novel theory to the case of many-body problems. We show that, when restricted to spatial finite domains and discrete momentum space, the proposed extended theory is equivalent to the time-dependent many-body Wigner Monte Carlo method. In this new picture, the treatment of entangled systems comes naturally and, therefore, we apply it to the study of quantum entangled…
The proton momentum distribution, accessible by deep inelastic neutron scattering, is a very sensitive probe of the potential of mean force experienced by the protons in hydrogen-bonded systems. In this work we introduce a novel estimator for the end to end distribution of the Feynman paths, i.e. the Fourier transform of the momentum distribution. In this formulation, free particle and environmental contributions factorize. Moreover, the environmental contribution has a natural analogy to a free energy surface in statistical mechanics, facilitating the interpretation of experiments. The new fo…
It is shown how bosonic material particles can emerge from a covariant formulation of de Broglie-Bohm theory. The formulation is based on the work of Nikolic. Material particles are continuous fields, formed as the eigenvalue of the Schrodinger field operator, evaluated along a Bohmian trajectory.
Signal-state quantum mechanics is used to discuss quantum mechanical particle decay probabilities and the quantum Zeno effect. This approach avoids the assumption of continuous time, conserves total probability and requires neither non-Hermitian Hamiltonians nor the ad-hoc introduction of complex energies. The formalism is applied to single channel decays, the ammonium molecule, and neutral Kaon decay processes.
After summarizing three versions of trajectory-based quantum mechanics, it is argued that only the original formulation due to Bohm, which uses the Schrödinger wave function to guide the particles, can be readily extended to particles with spin. To extend the two wave function-free formulations, it is argued that necessarily particle trajectories not only determine location, but also spin. Since spin values are discrete, it is natural to revert to a variation of Bohm's pilot wave formulation due originally to Bell. It is shown that within this formulation with stochastic quantum trajectories, …
We apply a recursive approach to the continuity equation of the Madelung fluid resulting in a propagation equation for particle probability densities. This propagation equation can be used to propagate particle distributions in the presence of a Madelung pressure field. We show that the derived propagation equation goes over into the guidance equation of the de Broglie-Bohm theory in the limit of well located single particles. As an example, we propagate particles that enter the lower slit of a double-slit experiment, while the Madelung fluid enters both slits.
A local realistic model for quantum mechanics of two-particle Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs is proposed. In this model, it is the strict obedience of conservation laws in each event at the quantum level that uphold the perfect correlation of two spatially-separated particles, instead of nonlocality in the orthodox formulation of quantum mechanics. Therefore, one can conclude that all components of the spin of two particles, and the position and momentum of a particle can be measured simultaneously. The proposed model yields the same statistical prediction on an ensemble of individual particles…
We propose to study echo dynamics in a random matrix framework, where we assume that the perturbation is time independent, random and orthogonally invariant. This allows to use a basis in which the unperturbed Hamiltonian is diagonal and its properties are thus largely determined by its spectral statistics. We concentrate on the effect of spectral correlations usually associated to chaos and disregard secular variations in spectral density. We obtain analytic results for the fidelity decay in the linear response regime. To extend the domain of validity, we heuristically exponentiate the linear…
Particle detectors are an ubiquitous tool for probing quantum fields in the context of relativistic quantum information (RQI). We formulate the Unruh-DeWitt (UDW) particle detector model in terms of the path integral formalism. The formulation is able to recover the results of the model in general globally hyperbolic spacetimes and for arbitrary detector trajectories. Integrating out the detector's degrees of freedom yields a line defect that allows one to express the transition probability in terms of Feynman diagrams. Inspired by the light-matter interaction, we propose a gauge invariant det…
A Euclidean formulation of relativistic quantum mechanics for systems of a finite number of degrees of freedom is discussed. Relativistic treatments of quantum theory are needed to study hadronic systems at sub-hadronic distance scales. While direct interaction approaches to relativistic quantum mechanics have proved to be useful, they have two disadvantages. One is that cluster properties are difficult to realize for systems of more than two particles. The second is that the relation to quantum field theories is indirect. Euclidean formulations of relativistic quantum mechanics provide an alt…
A quantum algorithm is developed to calculate decay rates and cross sections using quantum resources that scale polynomially in the system size assuming similar scaling for state preparation and time evolution. This is done by computing finite-volume one- and two-particle Green's functions on the quantum hardware. Particle decay rates and two particle scattering cross sections are extracted from the imaginary parts of the Green's function. A $0+1$ dimensional implementation of this method is demonstrated on IBM's superconducting quantum hardware for the decay of a heavy scalar particle to a pa…
