English

On obtaining classical mechanics from quantum mechanics

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2008-11-26 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

Constructing a classical mechanical system associated with a given quantum mechanical one, entails construction of a classical phase space and a corresponding Hamiltonian function from the available quantum structures and a notion of coarser observations. The Hilbert space of any quantum mechanical system naturally has the structure of an infinite dimensional symplectic manifold (`quantum phase space'). There is also a systematic, quotienting procedure which imparts a bundle structure to the quantum phase space and extracts a classical phase space as the base space. This works straight forwardly when the Hilbert space carries weakly continuous representation of the Heisenberg group and recovers the linear classical phase space R2N\mathbb{R}^{\mathrm{2N}}. We report on how the procedure also allows extraction of non-linear classical phase spaces and illustrate it for Hilbert spaces being finite dimensional (spin-j systems), infinite dimensional but separable (particle on a circle) and infinite dimensional but non-separable (Polymer quantization). To construct a corresponding classical dynamics, one needs to choose a suitable section and identify an effective Hamiltonian. The effective dynamics mirrors the quantum dynamics provided the section satisfies conditions of semiclassicality and tangentiality.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0606078,
  title  = {On obtaining classical mechanics from quantum mechanics},
  author = {Ghanashyam Date},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0606078},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

revtex4, 24 pages, no figures. In the version 2 certain technical errors in section I-B are corrected, the part on WKB (and section II-B) is removed, discussion of dynamics and semiclassicality is extended and references are added. Accepted for publication on Classical and Quantum Gravity

R2 v1 2026-07-22T12:45:34.617Z