Wednesday, December 10, 2014

quantum mechanics - What conservation law corresponds to this local $U(1)$ symmetry of the CCR?


It is known that canonical commutation relations do not fix the form of momentum operator. That means that if canonical commutation relations (CCR) are given by


$$[\hat{x}^i,\hat{p}_j]~=~i\hbar~\delta^i_j~ {\bf 1}$$


they can be satisfied by the following choice of momentum operators:


$p_x = -ih\frac{∂}{∂x}+\frac{∂f}{∂x}$


$p_y = -ih\frac{∂}{∂y}+\frac{∂f}{∂y}$


$p_z = -ih\frac{∂}{∂z}+\frac{∂f}{∂z}$


where $f(x,y,z)$ - arbitrary function.


On the other hand, for any choice of $f(x,y,z)$ momentum operators can be transformed to their most frequently used form $(-ih\frac{∂}{∂x})$ (etc for $y$ and $z$) by the following transformation of the wave function $\psi$ and operators $p$:



$\psi'=e^{-\frac{i}{h}f(x,y,z)}\psi$


$p^{'}_x =e^{-\frac{i}{h}f(x,y,z)}p_x e^{+\frac{i}{h}f(x,y,z)}=-ih\frac{∂}{∂x}$


Hence, we obtain $U(1)$ gauge transformation using only canonical commutation relations for momentum and position operators.


Does this mean that $U(1)$ gauge invariance corresponds to conservation of momentum rather than to conservation of electric charge?




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