Special-case closed form of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula
Abstract
The Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula is a general result for the quantity , where and are not necessarily commuting. For completely general commutation relations between and , (the free Lie algebra), the general result is somewhat unwieldy. However in specific physics applications the commutator , while non-zero, might often be relatively simple, which sometimes leads to explicit closed form results. We consider the special case , and show that in this case the general result reduces to Furthermore we explicitly evaluate the symmetric function , demonstrating that and relate this to previously known results. For instance this result includes, but is considerably more general than, results obtained from either the Heisenberg commutator or the creation-destruction commutator .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1501.02506,
title = {Special-case closed form of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula},
author = {Alexander Van-Brunt and Matt Visser},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.02506},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
V1: 5 pages. V2: 4 references added, some minor typos fixed, some discussion added. No change in conclusions. Now 6 pages. This version accepted for publication in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical