Wigner’s Photons
نویسنده
چکیده
If Einstein’s photon is E = cp = h̄ω, Wigner’s photon is its helicity which is a Lorentz-invariant concept coming from the E(2)-like little group for massless particles. In addition, the E(2)-like little group has two translationlike degrees of freedom. What happens to them? They are associated with the gauge degree of freedom. Since the physics of polarized light waves can be formulated within the framework of the Lorentz group, it is now possible to use polarization experiments to study the E(2)-like little group in terms of quantities that can be measured in laboratories.
منابع مشابه
A Generalization of Wigner’s Unitary-antiunitary Theorem to Hilbert Modules
Let H be a Hilbert C-module over a matrix algebra A. It is proved that any function T : H → H which preserves the absolute value of the (generalized) inner product is of the form Tf = φ(f)Uf (f ∈ H), where φ is a phase-function and U is an A-linear isometry. The result gives a natural extension of Wigner’s classical unitary-antiunitary theorem for Hilbert modules. 1991 Physics and Astronomy Cla...
متن کاملWigner’s Friend and Bell’s Field Beables
A field-theoretic version of Wigner’s friend (1961) illustrates how the quantum measurement problem arises for field theory. Similarly, considering spacelike separate measurements of entangled fields by observers akin to Wigner’s friend shows the sense in which relativistic constraints make the measurement problem particularly difficult to resolve in the context of a relativistic field theory. ...
متن کاملGeneralization of Wigner’s Unitary-antiunitary Theorem for Indefinite Inner Product Spaces
We present a generalization of Wigner’s unitary-antiunitary theorem for pairs of ray transformations. As a particular case, we get a new Wigner-type theorem for non-Hermitian indefinite inner product spaces. The classical Wigner unitary-antiunitary theorem plays a fundamental role in the foundations of quantum mechanics and it also has deep connections with the theory of projective spaces. It s...
متن کاملOn Eisenbud’s and Wigner’s R-matrix: A general approach
The main objective of this paper is to give a rigorous treatment of Wigner’s and Eisenbud’s R-matrix method for scattering matrices of scattering systems consisting of two selfadjoint extensions of the same symmetric operator with finite deficiency indices. In the framework of boundary triplets and associated Weyl functions an abstract generalization of the R-matrix method is developed and the ...
متن کاملAn Algebraic Approach to Wigner’s Unitary-antiunitary Theorem
We present an operator algebraic approach to Wigner’s unitary-antiunitary theorem using some classical results from ring theory. To show how effective this approach is, we prove a generalization of this celebrated theorem for Hilbert modules over matrix algebras. We also present a Wignertype result for maps on prime C-algebras. 1991 Mathematics subject classification (Amer. Math. Soc.): primary...
متن کامل