Quantum Mechanics

While classical mechanics considers deterministic evolution of particles and fields, quantum physics
follows nondeterministic evolution where the probability of various outcomes of measurement may be
predicted from the state in a Hilbert space representing the possible reality: that state undergoes a
unitary evolution, what means that the generator of the evolution is −1−−−√ times a Hermitean operator
called the quantum Hamiltonian or the Hamiltonian operator of the system. The theoretical framework
for describing this precisely is the quantum mechanics. It involves a constant of nature, Planck constant
h; some quantum systems with spatial interpretation in the limit h→0 lead to classical mechanical
systems (not all: some phenomena including non-integer spin are purely quantum mechanical, but the
properties depending on their existence survive in the “classical” limit); in limited generality, one can
motivate and find the nonfunctorial procedure to single out a right inverse to taking this classical limit
under the name quantization.

While quantum mechanics may be formulated for a wide range of physical systems, interpreted as
particles, extended particles and fields, the quantum mechanics of fields is often called the quantum
field theory and the quantum mechanics of systems of a fixed finite number of particles is often viewed
as the quantum mechanics in a narrow sense.

nPOV

Mathematically, despite the basic formalism of quantum mechanics which is sound and clear, there are
two big areas which are yet not clear. One is to understand quantization, in all cases – of particles, fields,
strings and so on. The second and possibly more central to nLab is a problem how to define rigorously a
wide range of quantum field theories and some related quantum mechanical systems like the
hypothetical superstring theory. Regarding that this is a central goal, we also put emphasis on the
interpretation of quantum mechanics via the picture which is a special case of a FQFT, and where the
time evolution functorially leads to evolution operators.

2. Definition

We discuss some basic notions of quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanical systems

Recall the notion of a classical mechanical system: the formal dual of a real commutative Poisson
algebra.

Definition 2.1. A quantum mechanical system is a star algebra (A,(−)∗) over the complex numbers. The
category of of quantum mechanical systems is the opposite category of *-algebras:

QuantMechSys:=*AlgopC.

Remark 2.2. It makes sense to think of this as a deformed version of a real Poisson algebra as follows:

the Poisson-Lie bracket of a Poisson algebra corresponds to the commutator of the *-algebra:

[a,b]:=ab−ba,

the commutative algebra structure of the Poisson algebra coresponds to the Jordan algebra structure of
the *-algebra, with commutative (but non-associative!) product

(a,b):=ab+ba.

With this interpretation the derivation-property of the Poisson bracket over the other product is
preserved: for all a,b,c∈A we have

[a,(b,c)]=([a,b],c)+(b,[a,c]).