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A Flow Equation Approach Striving Towards an Energy-Separating Hamiltonian Unitary Equivalent to the Dirac Hamiltonian with Coupling to Electromagnetic Fields

Quantum Physics 2022-08-04 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

The Dirac Hamiltonian H(D)H^{\left(D\right)} for relativistic charged fermions minimally coupled to (possibly time-dependent) electromagnetic fields is transformed with a purpose-built flow equation method, so that the result of that transformation is unitary equivalent to H(D)H^{\left(D\right)} and granted to strive towards a limiting value H(NW)H^{\left(NW\right)} commuting with the Dirac β\beta-matrix. Upon expansion of H(NW)H^{\left(NW\right)} to order v2c2\frac{v^2}{c^2} the nonrelativistic Hamiltonian H(SP)H^{\left(SP\right)} of Schr\"odinger-Pauli quantum mechanics emerges as the leading order term adding to the rest energy mc2mc^2. All the relativistic corrections to H(SP)H^{\left(SP\right)} are explicitly taken into account in the guise of a Magnus type series expansion, the series coefficients generated to order (v2c2)n\left(\frac{v^{2}}{c^{2}}\right)^{n} for n2n\geq2 comprising partial sums of iterated commutators only. In the special case of static fields the equivalence of the flow equation method with the well known energy-separating unitary transformation of Eriksen is established on the basis of an exact solution of a reverse flow equation transforming the β\beta-matrix into the energy-sign operator associated with H(D)H^{\left(D\right)}. That way the identity H(NW)=βH(NW)H(NW)H^{\left(NW\right)}=\beta\sqrt{H^{\left(NW\right)}H^{\left(NW\right)}} is established implying H(NW)H^{\left(NW\right)} being determined unambiguously.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.12825,
  title  = {A Flow Equation Approach Striving Towards an Energy-Separating Hamiltonian Unitary Equivalent to the Dirac Hamiltonian with Coupling to Electromagnetic Fields},
  author = {N. Schopohl and N. S. Cetin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.12825},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Typo's corrected