English

Lower bound of minimal time evolution in quantum mechanics

Quantum Physics 2008-11-26 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We show that the total time of evolution from the initial quantum state to final quantum state and then back to the initial state, i.e., making a round trip along the great circle over S^2, must have a lower bound in quantum mechanics, if the difference between two eigenstates of the 2\times 2 Hamiltonian is kept fixed. Even the non-hermitian quantum mechanics can not reduce it to arbitrarily small value. In fact, we show that whether one uses a hermitian Hamiltonian or a non-hermitian, the required minimal total time of evolution is same. It is argued that in hermitian quantum mechanics the condition for minimal time evolution can be understood as a constraint coming from the orthogonality of the polarization vector \bf P of the evolving quantum state \rho={1/2}(\bf 1+ \bf{P}\cdot\boldsymbol{\sigma}) with the vector \boldsymbol{\mathcal O}(\Theta) of the 2\times 2 hermitian Hamiltonians H ={1/2}({\mathcal O}_0\boldsymbol{1}+ \boldsymbol{\mathcal O}(\Theta)\cdot\boldsymbol{\sigma}) and it is shown that the Hamiltonian H can be parameterized by two independent parameters {\mathcal O}_0 and \Theta.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0706.3653,
  title  = {Lower bound of minimal time evolution in quantum mechanics},
  author = {Pulak Ranjan Giri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0706.3653},
  year   = {2008}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T08:41:50.967Z