Title
Liouville Invariance in Quantum and Classical Mechanics
Abstract
The density-matrix and Heisenberg formulations of quantum mechanics follow—for unitary evolution—directly from the Schrödinger equation. Nevertheless, the symmetries of the corresponding evolution operator, the Liouvillian L = i[⋅, H], need not be limited to those of the Hamiltonian H. This is due to L only involving eigenenergy differences, which can be degenerate even if the energies themselves are not. Remarkably, this possibility has rarely been mentioned in the literature, and never pursued more generally. We consider an example involving mesoscopic Josephson devices, but the analysis only assumes familiarity with basic quantum mechanics. Subsequently, such L-symmetries are shown to occur more widely, in particular also in classical mechanics. The symmetry's relevance to dissipative systems and quantum-information processing is briefly discussed.PACS: 03.65.-w, 03.67.-a, 45.20.Jj, 74.50.+r
Year
DOI
Venue
2002
10.1023/A:1019657303471
Quantum Information Processing
Keywords
Field
DocType
symmetry,superoperators,phase-space flow
Quantum statistical mechanics,Quantum electrodynamics,Correspondence principle,Quantum mechanics,Relativistic quantum mechanics,Quantum dissipation,Method of quantum characteristics,Time evolution,Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics,Supersymmetric quantum mechanics,Classical mechanics,Physics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
1
1/2
Quantum Information Processing_1_, 55 (2002)
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
1
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alec Maassen Brink121.10
A. M. Zagoskin221.44