English

Dyson Maps and Unitary Evolution for Maxwell Equations in Tensor Dielectric Media

Plasma Physics 2023-04-21 v3 Quantum Physics

Abstract

A reformulation of Maxwell equations for an inhomogeneous, anisotropic, passive and non-dispersive medium results in a quantum-like Dirac equation that admits unitary time evolution. In contrast to other approaches, there is no a-priori introduction of the Riemann-Silberstein-Weber (RSW) vector but the Maxwell equations are considered in their standard fields, with given constitutive relations. From the electromagnetic conservation quantities a pseudo-Hermitian dynamics is found together with a Dyson map that recovers the full Hermicity of the dynamics in an extended Hilbert space that describes the physical notion of unitary evolution. As an example, a uniaxial tensor dielectric medium is considered, with the explicit Dyson map yielding an optimal representation in a set of generalized RSW vectors. In this newly discovered form, a Quantum Computing (QC) implementation for simulation of electromagnetic wave propagation in complex media can be made, with further extension into plasmas.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.08523,
  title  = {Dyson Maps and Unitary Evolution for Maxwell Equations in Tensor Dielectric Media},
  author = {Efstratios Koukoutsis and Kyriakos Hizanidis and Abhay K. Ram and George Vahala},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.08523},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T01:31:37.406Z