English

Universal Bounds on Quantum Mechanics through Energy Conservation and the Bootstrap Method

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-02-16 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

The range of motion of a particle with certain energy EE confined in a potential is determined from the energy conservation law in classical mechanics. The counterpart of this question in quantum mechanics can be regarded as what the possible range of the expectation values of the position operator x \langle x \rangle of a particle, which satisfies E=HE= \langle H \rangle. This range depends on the state of the particle, but the universal upper and lower bounds, which is independent of the state, must exist. In this study, we show that these bounds can be derived by using the bootstrap method. We also point out that the bootstrap method can be regarded as a generalization of the uncertainty relations, and it means that the bounds are determined by the uncertainty relations in a broad sense. Furthermore, the bounds on possible expectation values of various quantities other than position can be determined in the same way. However, in the case of multiple identical particles (bosons and fermions), we find some difficulty in the bootstrap method. Because of this issue, the predictive power of the bootstrap method in multi-particle systems is limited in the derivation of observables including energy eigenstates. In addition, we argue an application of the bootstrap method to thermal equilibrium states. We find serious issues that temperature and entropy cannot be handled. Although we have these issues, we can derive some quantities in micro-canonical ensembles of integrable systems governed by generalized Gibbs ensembles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.09370,
  title  = {Universal Bounds on Quantum Mechanics through Energy Conservation and the Bootstrap Method},
  author = {Takeshi Morita},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.09370},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

35 pages, 12 figures, v2: numerical analysis in sec.3.1.2 was revised, v3: title changed, references added, parts of sec 4.3 shifted to appendix B, matches published version

R2 v1 2026-06-25T01:49:25.835Z