Coherent states in mathematical physics explained
Coherent states have been introduced in a physical context, first as quasi-classical states in quantum mechanics, then as the backbone of quantum optics and they are described in that spirit in the article Coherent states (see also[1]). However, they have generated a huge variety of generalizations, which have led to a tremendous amount of literature in mathematical physics.In this article, we sketch the main directions of research on this line. For further details, we refer to several existing surveys.[2] [3] [4]
A general definition
Let
be a complex, separable
Hilbert space,
a
locally compact space and
a measure on
. For each
in
, denote
a vector in
. Assume that this set of vectors possesses the following properties:
- The mapping
is weakly continuous, i.e., for each vector
in
, the function
\Psi(x)=\langlex|\psi\rangle
is continuous (in the topology of
).
- The resolution of the identity holds in the weak sense on the Hilbert space
, i.e., for any two vectors
|\phi\rangle,|\psi\rangle
in
, the following equality holds:
A set of vectors
satisfying the two properties above is called a family of
generalized coherent states. In order to recover the previous definition (given in the article
Coherent state) of canonical or standard coherent states (CCS), it suffices to take
, the complex plane and
Sometimes the resolution of the identity condition is replaced by a weaker condition, with the vectors
simply forming a total set in
and the functions
\Psi(x)=\langlex|\psi\rangle
, as
runs through
, forming a
reproducing kernel Hilbert space.The objective in both cases is to ensure that an arbitrary vector
be expressible as a linear (integral) combination of these vectors. Indeed, the resolution of the identity immediately implies that
where
\Psi(x)=\langlex|\psi\rangle
.
These vectors
are square integrable, continuous functions on
and satisfy the
reproducing propertywhere
is the reproducing kernel, which satisfies the following properties
Some examples
We present in this section some of the more commonly used types of coherent states, as illustrations of the general structure given above.
Nonlinear coherent states
A large class of generalizations of the CCS is obtained by a simple modification of their analytic structure. Let
\varepsilon1\leq\varepsilon2\leq...\leq\varepsilonn\leq …
be an infinite sequence of positive numbers (
). Define
\varepsilonn!=\varepsilon1\varepsilon2\ldots\varepsilonn
and by convention set
. In the same
Fock space in which the CCS were described, we now define the related
deformed or
nonlinear coherent states by the expansion
The normalization factor
is chosen so that
\langle\alpha\vert\alpha\rangle=1
. These generalized coherent states are overcomplete in the Fock space and satisfy a resolution of the identity
being an open disc in the complex plane of radius
, the radius of convergence of the series
(in the case of the CCS,
.) The measure
is generically of the form
(for
), where
is related to the
through the moment condition.
Once again, we see that for an arbitrary vector
in the Fock space, the function
\Phi(\alpha)=\langle\phi|\alpha\rangle
is of the form
\Phi(\alpha)={lN}(\vert\alpha\vert2)
f(\alpha)
, where
is an
analytic function on the domain
. The reproducing kernel associated to these coherent states is
Barut–Girardello coherent states
by its action on the vectors
,
and its adjoint operator
. These act on the
Fock states
as
Depending on the exact values of the quantities
, these two operators, together with the identity
and all their commutators, could generate a wide range of algebras including various types of deformed
quantum algebras. The term 'nonlinear', as often applied to these generalized coherent states, comes again from quantum optics where many such families of states are used in studying the interaction between the radiation field and atoms, where the strength of the interaction itself depends on the frequency of radiation. Of course, these coherent states will not in general have either the group theoretical or the minimal uncertainty properties of the CCS (they might have more general ones).
Operators
and
of the general type defined above are also known as
ladder operators . When such operators appear as generators of representations of Lie algebras, the eigenvectors of
are usually called
Barut–Girardello coherent states.
[5] A typical example is obtained from the representations of the
Lie algebra of SU(1,1) on the
Fock space.
Gazeau–Klauder coherent states
A non-analytic extension of the above expression of the non-linear coherent states is often used to define generalized coherent states associated to physical Hamiltonians having pure point spectra. These coherent states, known as Gazeau–Klauder coherent states, are labelled by action-angle variables.[6] Suppose that we are given the physical Hamiltonian , with
, i.e., it has the energy eigenvalues
and eigenvectors
, which we assume to form an orthonormal basis for the Hilbert space of states
. Let us write the eigenvalues as
by introducing a sequence of dimensionless quantities
ordered as:
0=\varepsilon0<\varepsilon1<\varepsilon2< …
. Then, for all
and
, the Gazeau–Klauder coherent states are defined as
where again
is a normalization factor, which turns out to be dependent on
only. These coherent states satisfy the
temporal stability condition,
and the action identity,While these generalized coherent states do form an overcomplete set in
, the resolution of the identity is generally not given by an integral relation as above, but instead by an integral in Bohr's sense, like it is in use in the theory of
almost periodic functions.
Actually the construction of Gazeau–Klauder CS can be extended to vector CS and to Hamiltonians with degenerate spectra, as shown by Ali and Bagarello.[7]
Heat kernel coherent states
Another type of coherent state arises when considering a particle whose configuration space is the group manifold of a compact Lie group K. Hall introduced coherent states in which the usual Gaussian on Euclidean space is replaced by the heat kernel on K.[8] The parameter space for the coherent states is the "complexification" of ; e.g., if is then the complexification is . These coherent states have a resolution of the identity that leads to a Segal-Bargmann space over the complexification. Hall's results were extended to compact symmetric spaces, including spheres, by Stenzel.[9] [10] The heat kernel coherent states, in the case
, have been applied in the theory of quantum gravity by Thiemann and his collaborators.
[11] Although there are two different Lie groups involved in the construction, the heat kernel coherent states are not of Perelomov type.
The group-theoretical approach
Gilmore and Perelomov, independently, realized that the construction of coherent states may sometimes be viewed as a group theoretical problem.[12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
In order to see this, let us go back for a while to the case of CCS. There, indeed, the displacement operator
is nothing but the representative in
Fock space of an element of the
Heisenberg group (also called the Weyl–Heisenberg group), whose
Lie algebra is generated by
and
. However, before going on with the CCS, take first the general case.
Let
be a
locally compact group and suppose that it has a continuous, irreducible
representation
on a Hilbert space
by unitary operators
. This representation is called
square integrable if there exists a non-zero vector
in
for which the integral
converges. Here
is the left invariant
Haar measure on
. A vector
for which
is said to be
admissible, and it can be shown that the existence of one such vector guarantees the existence of an entire dense set of such vectors in
. Moreover, if the group
is
unimodular, i.e., if the left and the right invariant measures coincide, then the existence of one admissible vector implies that every vector in
is admissible. Given a square integrable representation
and an admissible vector
, let us define the vectors
These vectors are the analogues of the canonical coherent states, written there in terms of the representation of the Heisenberg group (however, see the section on Gilmore-Perelomov CS, below). Next, it can be shown that the resolution of the identityholds on
. Thus, the vectors
constitute a family of generalized coherent states. The functions
F(g)=\langleg|\phi\rangle
for all vectors
in
are square integrable with respect to the measure
and the set of such functions, which in fact are continuous in the topology of
, forms a closed subspace of
. Furthermore, the mapping
is a linear isometry between
and
and under this isometry the representation
gets mapped to a subrepresentation of the left
regular representation of
on
.
An example: wavelets
A typical example of the above construction is provided by the affine group of the line,
. This is the group of all 2×2 matrices of the type,
and
being real numbers with
. We shall also write
, with the action on
given by
. This group is non-unimodular, with the left invariant measure being given by
(the right invariant measure being
). The affine group has a unitary irreducible representation on the Hilbert space
. Vectors in
are measurable functions
of the real variable
and the (unitary) operators
of this representation act on them as
If
is a function in
such that its
Fourier transform
satisfies the (admissibility) condition
then it can be shown to be an admissible vector, i.e.,
Thus, following the general construction outlined above, the vectors
define a family of generalized coherent states and one has the resolution of the identity
on
.In the signal analysis literature, a vector satisfying the admissibility condition above is called a
mother wavelet and the generalized coherent states
are called
wavelets. Signals are then identified with vectors
in
and the function
is called the
continuous wavelet transform of the signal
.
[17] [18] This concept can be extended to two dimensions, the group
being replaced by the so-called
similitude group of the plane, which consists of plane translations, rotations and global dilations. The resulting 2D wavelets, and some generalizations of them, are widely used in
image processing.
[19] Gilmore–Perelomov coherent states
The construction of coherent states using group representations described above is not sufficient. Already it cannot yield the CCS, since these are not indexed by the elements of the Heisenberg group, but rather by points of the quotient of the latter by its center, that quotient being precisely
. The key observation is that the center of the Heisenberg group leaves the vacuum vector
invariant, up to a phase. Generalizing this idea, Gilmore and Perelomov
[12] [13] [14] [15] consider a locally compact group
and a unitary irreducible representation
of
on the Hilbert space
, not necessarily square integrable. Fix a vector
in
, of unit norm, and denote by
the subgroup of
consisting of all elements
that leave it invariant
up to a phase, that is,
where
is a real-valued function of
. Let
be the left coset space and
an arbitrary element in
. Choosing a coset representative
, for each coset
, we define the vectors
The dependence of these vectors on the specific choice of the coset representative
is only through a phase. Indeed, if instead of
, we took a different representative
for the same coset
, then since
for some
, we would have
U(g(x)')|\psi\rangle=ei\omega|x\rangle
. Hence, quantum mechanically, both
and
represent the same physical state and in particular, the projection operator
\left|x\right\rangle\left\langlex\right|
depends only on the coset. Vectors
defined in this way are called
Gilmore–Perelomov coherent states. Since
is assumed to be irreducible, the set of all these vectors as
runs through
is dense in
. In this definition of generalized coherent states, no resolution of the identity is postulated. However, if
carries an invariant measure, under the natural action of
, and if the formal operator
defined as
is bounded, then it is necessarily a multiple of the identity and a resolution of the identity is again retrieved.
Gilmore–Perelomov coherent states have been generalized to quantum groups, but for this we refer to the literature.[20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
Further generalization: Coherent states on coset spaces
The Perelomov construction can be used to define coherent states for any locally compact group. On the other hand, particularly in case of failure of the Gilmore–Perelomov construction, there exist other constructions of generalized coherent states, using group representations, which generalize the notion of square integrability to homogeneous spaces of the group.[2] [3]
Briefly, in this approach one starts with a unitary irreducible representation
and attempts to find a vector
, a subgroup
and a
section
such that
where
|x\rangle=U(\sigma(x))\left|\psi\right\rangle
,
is a bounded, positive operator with bounded inverse and
is a quasi-invariant measure on
. It is not assumed that
be invariant up to a phase under the action of
and clearly, the best situation is when
is a multiple of the identity. Although somewhat technical, this general construction is of enormous versatility for semi-direct product groups of the type
, where
is a closed subgroup of
. Thus, it is useful for many physically important groups, such as the
Poincaré group or the
Euclidean group, which do not have square integrable representations in the sense of the earlier definition. In particular, the integral condition defining the operator
ensures that any vector
in
can be written in terms of the generalized coherent states
namely,
which is the primary aim of any kind of coherent states.
Coherent states: a Bayesian construction for the quantization of a measure set
We now depart from the standard situation and present a general method of construction of coherent states, starting from a few observations on the structure of these objects as superpositions of eigenstates of some self-adjoint operator, as was the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian for the standard CS. It is the essence of quantum mechanics that this superposition has a probabilistic flavor. As a matter of fact, we notice that the probabilistic structure of the canonical coherent states involves two probability distributions that underlie their construction. There are, in a sort of duality, a Poisson distribution ruling the probability of detecting
excitations when the quantum system is in a coherent state
, and a
gamma distribution on the set
of complex parameters, more exactly on the range
of the square of the radial variable. The generalization follows that duality scheme. Let
be a set of parameters equipped with a measure
and its associated Hilbert space
of complex-valued functions, square integrable with respect to
. Let us choose in
a finite or countable orthonormal set
:
In case of infinite countability, this set must obey the (crucial) finiteness condition:
Let
be a separable complex Hilbert space with orthonormal basis
in one-to-one correspondence with the elements of
. The two conditions above imply that the family of normalized
coherent states
}= \
in
, which are defined by
resolves the identity in
:
Such a relation allows us to implement a
coherent state or
frame quantization of the set of parameters
by associating to a function
that satisfies appropriate conditions the following operator in
:
The operator
is symmetric if
is real-valued, and it is self-adjoint (as a quadratic form) if
is real and semi-bounded. The original
is an
upper symbol, usually non-unique, for the operator
. It will be called a
classical observable with respect to the family
} if the so-called
lower symbol of
, defined as
has mild functional properties to be made precise according to further topological properties granted to the original set
.A last point of this construction of the space of quantum states concerns its statistical aspects.There is indeed an interplay between two probability distributions:
See also
References
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