English

Polymer quantization and Symmetries

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2013-03-19 v2

Abstract

Polymer quantization was discovered during the construction of Loop Quantum Cosmology. For the simplest quantum theory of one degree of freedom, the implications for dynamics were studied for the harmonic oscillator as well as some other potentials. For more degrees of freedom, the possibility of continuous, kinematic symmetries arises. While these are realised on the Hilbert space of polymer quantum mechanics, their infinitesimal versions are not supported. For an invariant Hamiltonian, these symmetry realizations imply infinite degeneracy suggesting that the symmetry should be spontaneously or explicitly broken. The estimation of symmetry violations in some cases have been analysed before. Here we explore the alternative of shifting the arena to the distributional states. We discuss both the polymer quantum mechanics case as well as polymer quantized scalar field.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1211.0823,
  title  = {Polymer quantization and Symmetries},
  author = {Ghanashyam Date and Nirmalya Kajuri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1211.0823},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

20 pages, version 2, added further explanations and references. Results and conclusions unchanged. Version to appear in CQG

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:32:53.544Z