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


[ˆxi,ˆpj] = i δij 1


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


px=ihx+fx


py=ihy+fy


pz=ihz+fz


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 (ihx) (etc for y and z) by the following transformation of the wave function ψ and operators p:



ψ=eihf(x,y,z)ψ


px=eihf(x,y,z)pxe+ihf(x,y,z)=ihx


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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