Quantum canonical transformations corresponding to time-dependent diffeomorphisms of the configuration space are studied. A special class of these transformations which correspond to time-dependent dilatations is used to identify a previously unknown class of exactly solvable time-dependent harmonic oscillators. The Caldirola-Kanai oscillator belongs to this class. For a general time-dependent harmonic oscillator, it is shown that choosing the dilatation parameter to satisfy the classical equation of motion, one obtains the solution of the Schrödinger equation. A simple generalization of this result leads to the reduction of the Schrödinger equation to a second order ordinary differential equation whose special case is the auxiliary equation of the Lewis-Riesenfeld invariant theory. Time-evolution operator is expressed in terms of a positive real solution of this equation in a closed form, and the time-dependent position and momentum operators are calculated.
A {\em complex} canonical transformation is found that takes the fourth order derivative Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator into two independent harmonic oscillators thus showing that this model has energy bounded from below, unitary time-evolution and no negative norm states, or ghosts. Such transformation yields a positive definite inner product consistent with reality conditions in the Hilbert space. The method is illustrated by eliminating the negative norm states in a complex oscillator. Extensions to other higher order mechanical models and field theory are discussed.
We provide a new canonical approach for studying the quantum mechanical damped harmonic oscillator based on the doubling of degrees of freedom approach. Explicit expressions for Lagrangians of the elementary modes of the problem, characterising both forward and backward time propagations are given. A Hamiltonian analysis, showing the equivalence with the Lagrangian approach, is also done. Based on this Hamiltonian analysis, the quantization of the model is discussed.
A time-dependent unitary (canonical) transformation is found which maps the Hamiltonian for a harmonic oscillator with time-dependent real mass and real frequency to that of a generalized harmonic oscillator with time-dependent real mass and imaginary frequency. The latter may be reduced to an ordinary harmonic oscillator by means of another unitary (canonical) transformation. A simple analysis of the resulting system leads to the identification of a previously unknown class of exactly solvable time-dependent oscillators. Furthermore, it is shown how one can apply these results to establish a …
A certain notion of canonical equivalence in quantum mechanics is proposed. It is used to relate quantal systems with discrete ones. Discrete systems canonically equivalent to the celebrated harmonic oscillator as well as the quartic and the quasi-exactly-solvable anharmonic oscillators are found. They can be viewed as a translation-covariant discretization of the (an)harmonic oscillator preserving isospectrality. The notion of the $q-$deformation of the canonical equivalence leading to a dilatation-covariant discretization preserving polynomiality of eigenfunctions is also presented.
Quantum canonical transformations corresponding to the action of the unitary operator $e^{iε(t)\sqrt{f(x)}p\sqrt{f(x)}}$ is studied. It is shown that for $f(x)=x$, the effect of this transformation is to rescale the position and momentum operators by $e^{ε(t)}$ and $e^{-ε(t)}$, respectively. This transformation is shown to lead to the identification of a previously unknown class of exactly solvable time-dependent harmonic oscillators. It turns out that the Caldirola-Kanai oscillator whose mass is given by $m=m_0 e^{γt}$, belongs to this class. It is also shown that for arbitrary $f(x)$, this c…
The main goal of this work is to study the Dirac oscillator as a quantum field using the canonical formalism of quantum field theory and to develop the canonical quantization procedure for this system in $(1+1)$ and $(3+1)$ dimensions. This is possible because the Dirac oscillator is characterized by the absence of the Klein paradox and by the completeness of its eigenfunctions. We show that the Dirac oscillator field can be seen as constituted by infinite degrees of freedom which are identified as decoupled quantum linear harmonic oscillators. We observe that while for the free Dirac field th…
We show that representations of the group of spacetime diffeomorphism and the Dirac algebra both arise in a phase-space histories version of canonical general relativity. This is the general-relativistic analogue of the novel time structure introduced previously in history theory: namely, the existence in non-relativistic physics of two types of time translation; and the existence in relativistic field theory of two distinct Poincare groups.
Our purpose in this paper is to analyze the Pais-Uhlenbeck (PU) oscillator using complex canonical transformations. We show that starting from a Lagrangian approach we obtain a transformation that makes the extended PU oscillator, with unequal frequencies, to be equivalent to two standard second order oscillators which have the original number of degrees of freedom. Such extension is provided by adding a total time derivative to the PU Lagrangian together with a complexification of the original variables further subjected to reality conditions in order to maintain the required number of degree…
We propose a mechanism for system-induced spontaneous time reparametrization symmetry breaking in canonical gravity. We consider a model of extended canonical gravity, based on Sen's spinorial expression of the spatial-diffeomorphism-gauge independent part of the shift vector, with one additional long-range self-interacting massive spin-$1/2$ particle whose spin is coupled to Sen's spinor in the Hamiltonian. This additional particle plays the role of creating the system-induced time reparametrization invariant potential. We use this potential to break time reparametrization symmetry spontaneou…
Valtancoli in his paper entitled [P. Valtancoli, Canonical transformations, and minimal length J. Math. Phys. 56, 122107 (2015)] has shown how the deformation of the canonical transformations can be made compatible with the deformed Poisson brackets. Based on this work and through an appropriate canonical transformation, we solve the problem of one dimensional (1D) damped harmonic oscillator at the classical limit of the Snyder-de Sitter (SdS) space. We show that the equations of the motion can be described by trigonometric functions with frequency and period depending on the deformed and the …
A harmonic oscillator is an indefinite-frequency one if the parameter $ω$ is replaced by an operator. An ensemble of $N$ such oscillators may be regarded as a toy model of a bosonic quantum field. All the possible frequencies associated with a given problem are present already in a single oscillator and $N$ can be finite. Due to the operator character of $ω$ the resulting algebra of creation-annihilation operators is non-canonical. In the limit of large $N$ one recovers perturbation theory formulas of the canonical quantum field theory but with form factors automatically built in. Vacuum energ…
The quantum oscillator and Kepler-Coulomb problems in $d$-dimensional spaces with constant curvature are analyzed from several viewpoints. In a deformed supersymmetric framework, the corresponding nonlinear potentials are shown to exhibit a deformed shape invariance property. By using the point canonical transformation method, the two deformed Schrödinger equations are mapped onto conventional ones corresponding to some shape-invariant potentials, whose rational extensions are well known. The inverse point canonical transformations then provide some rational extensions of the oscillator and Ke…
In this work we address the problem of the quantization of a simple harmonic oscillator that is perturbed by a time dependent force. The approach consists of removing the perturbation by a canonical change of coordinates. Since the quantization procedure uses the classical Hamiltonian formalism as staring point, the change of variables is carried out using canonical transformations, and to transform between the quantized systems the canonical transformation is implemented as a unitary transformation mapping the states of the perturbed and unperturbed system onto each other.
The problem of time in canonical quantum gravity is related to the fact that the canonical description is based on the prior choice of a spacelike foliation, hence making a reference to a spacetime metric. However, the metric is expected to be a dynamical, fluctuating quantity in quantum gravity. We show how this problem can be solved in the histories formulation of general relativity. We implement the 3+1 decomposition using metric-dependent foliations which remain spacelike with respect to all possible Lorentzian metrics. This allows us to find an explicit relation of covariant and canonical…
Impact of the non-canonical approach to the exact solution of the ideal one-dimensional electron gas confined with an anisotropic quantum wire of oscillator-shaped profile
Extended phase space (EPS) formulation of quantum statistical mechanics treats the ordinary phase space coordinates on the same footing and thereby permits the definite the canonical momenta conjugate to these coordinates . The extended lagrangian and extended hamiltonian are defined in EPS by the same procedure as one does for ordinary lagrangian and hamiltonian. The combination of ordinary phase space and their conjugate momenta exhibits the evolution of particles and their mirror images together. The resultant evolution equation in EPS for a damped harmonic oscillator, is such that the ener…
The eigenvalues of a pure quartic oscillator are computed, applying a canonical operator formulation, generalized from the harmonic oscillator. Solving a 10x10 secular equation produces eigenvalues in agreement, to at least 4 significant figures, with accurate computations given in the literature.
Canonical transformations are defined and discussed along with the exponential, the coherent and the ultracoherent vectors. It is shown that the single-mode and the $n$-mode squeezing operators are elements of the group of canonical transformations. An application of canonical transformations is made, in the context of open quantum systems, by studying the effect of squeezing of the bath on the decoherence properties of the system. Two cases are analyzed. In the first case the bath consists of a massless bosonic field with the bath reference states being the squeezed vacuum states and squeezed…
In a system of coupled harmonic oscillators, the interaction can be represented by a real, symmetric and positive definite interaction matrix. The quantization of a Hamiltonian describing such a system has been done in the canonical case. In this paper, we take a more general approach and look at the system as a Wigner quantum system. Hereby, one does not assume the canonical commutation relations, but instead one just requires the compatibility between the Hamilton and Heisenberg equations. Solutions of this problem are related to the Lie superalgebras gl(1|n) and osp(1|2n). We determine the …
We analyze the quantization of the Pais-Uhlenbeck fourth order oscillator within the framework of deformation quantization. Our approach exploit the Noether symmetries of the system by proposing integrals of motion as the variables to obtain a solution to the -genvalue equation, namely the Wigner function. We also obtain, by means of a quantum canonical transformation the wave function associated to the Schrödinger equation of the system. We show that unitary evolution of the system is guaranteed by means of the quantum canonical transformation and via the properties of the constructed Wigner …
We define a Wigner distribution function for a one-dimensional finite quantum system, in which the position and momentum operators have a finite (multiplicity-free) spectrum. The distribution function is thus defined on discrete phase-space, i.e. on a finite discrete square grid. These discrete Wigner functions possess a number of properties similar to the Wigner function for a continuous quantum system such as the quantum harmonic oscillator. As an example, we consider the so-called su(2) oscillator model in dimension 2j+1, which is known to tend to the canonical oscillator when j tends to in…
We consider canonically conjugated generalized space and linear momentum operators $\hat{x}_q$ and $ \hat{p}_q$ in quantum mechanics, associated to a generalized translation operator which produces infinitesimal deformed displacements controlled by a deformation parameter $q$. A canonical transformation $(\hat{x}, \hat{p}) \rightarrow (\hat{x}_q, \hat{p}_q)$ leads the Hamiltonian of a position-dependent mass particle in usual space to another Hamiltonian of a particle with constant mass in a conservative force field of the deformed space. The equation of motion for the classical phase space $(…
We compare decoherence induced in a simple quantum system (qubit) for two different initial states of the environment: canonical (fixed temperature) and microcanonical (fixed energy), for the general case of a fully interacting oscillator environment. We find that even a relatively compact oscillator bath (with the effective number of degrees of freedom of order 10), initially in a microcanonical state, will typically cause decoherence almost indistinguishable from that by a macroscopic, thermal environment, except possibly at singularities of the environment's specific heat (critical points).…
Modeling a nonlinear anisotropic magnetodielectric medium with spatial-temporal dispersion by two continuum collections of three dimensional harmonic oscillators, a fully canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field is demonstrated in the presence of such a medium. Some coupling tensors of various ranks are introduced that couple the magnetodielectric medium with the electromagnetic field. The polarization and magnetization fields of the medium are defined in terms of the coupling tensors and the oscillators modeling the medium. The electric and magnetic susceptibility tensors of the me…
In a recent paper by Jafarov, Nagiyev, Oste and Van der Jeugt (2020 {\sl J.\ Phys.\ A} {\bf 53} 485301), a confined model of the non-relativistic quantum harmonic oscillator, where the effective mass and the angular frequency are dependent on the position, was constructed and it was shown that the confinement parameter gets quantized. By using a point canonical transformation starting from the constant-mass Schrödinger equation for the Rosen-Morse II potential, it is shown here that similar results can be easily obtained without quantizing the confinement parameter. In addition, an extension t…
