Final Report on

“Lagrangian Formulation, Canonical Quantisation, and Particle interpretation of

By

S Kaushik Srinivasan 2015B5A40621P

Prepared in fulfillment of the course

Under the Guidance of

BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE, PILANI

Quantum field theory has traditionally been a pursuit of particle physicists. In recent
years, some condensed matter physicists have also succumbed to its chams, but the
rationale adopted in this book is the traditional on: that the reason for studying field
theory lies in the hope that it will shed light on the fundamental particles of matter and
their interactions. Surely (the argument goes), a structure that incorporates quantum
theory - which was so amazingly successful in resolving the many problems of atomic
physics in the early part of this century - and field theory - the language in which was
case the equally amazing picture of reality uncovered by Faraday, Maxwell and Hertz -
surely, a structure built on these twin foundations should provide some insight into the
fundamental nature of matter.

And indeed it has done. Quantum Electrodynamics, the first child of this marriage,
predicted (to name only one of its successes) the anomalous magnetic moment of the
electron correctly to six decimal places; what more could one want of a physical theory?
Quantum Electrodynamics was formulated in about 1950, many years after quantum
mechanics. Planck’s original quantum hypothesis from 1901, however, was indeed that
the electromagnetic field be quantised; the quanta we call photons. In the years leading
up to 1925, the quantum ideas was applied to the mechanics of atomic motion, and this
resulted in particle-wave duality and the schrodinger wave equation for electrons.It was
only after this that a proper, systematic treatment of the quantised electromagnetic field
was devised, thus coming, as it were, full circle back to Planck and completing the
quantisation of a major area of classical physics.

Now, in a sense, quantisation blurs the distinction between particles and fields; point
particles become fuzzy and subject to a wave equation, and the (EM) field, classically
represented as a continuum, takes on a particle nature (the photon). It may then very
well be asked: if we have charged particles (electrons, say) interacting with each other
through the EM field, then in view of quantisation, which renders the particle and the
field rather similar, is there an essential distinction between them? The answer to this
particles takes us into elementary particle physics. The salient point is that photons are
the quanta of the field which describes the interaction between the particles of matter.
The electrons ‘happen to be there’ and because they interact the EM field and therefore,
photons become compulsory! But this is not all. Muons and protons and all sorts of
other charged particles also happen to exist and to interact in the same way, through
the EM field. The reason for the existence of all these particles is so far unknown, but
we may summarize by saying that we have a spectrum of particle states and a field
through which these particles interact - an interaction, in short. This treatment and
mode of comprehension of electrodynamics provides the paradigm, I believe, for a
complete understanding of particle interactions, The idea is simply to apply the same
methods and concepts to the other interactions known in nature. The only other
interaction known in classical physics is the gravitational one.

LAGRANGIAN FORMULATION, SYMMETRIES, AND GAUGE FIELDS:

We shall now be looking at the Lagrangian formulation of scalar fields and be deriving
some important results from them - conservations laws, particle interpretations. These
matters are the concern of Noether’s theorem, which connects symmetries and
conservation laws, using a Lagrangian formulation of field theory. At the same time it
emerges that, in order to have a local symmetry, we need a spin 1 massless gauge
field, whose interaction with the ‘matter’ fields is dictated uniquely. This gives us the EM,
weak, and strong interactions, the respective gauge fields being the photon, the weak
boson and the gluons.

We begin, then, with a discussion of the Lagrangian formulation of field theory, which
plays such a central role in the contemporary understanding of interactions and
symmetries. In the context of classical physics, by ‘Lagrangian’ formulation we mean
‘the principle of least action’ . Hence, we go by the variational principle and we equate
the action of the integral equal to zero and as a result, we obtain the Euler-Lagrange
equations of motion.

If we replace the passage of the point particle with a scalar field that depends upon the
spacetime coordinates, then we can see that the scalar field obeys Klein-Gordon
equation. The Klein-Gordon equation has the variable ‘m’. We will understand the
significance of this variable in the forthcoming pages, and when we see that on
quantisation of the classical scalar field, we arrive at a particle interpretation, and the
particles have mass m.

We shall now consider transformations of the spacetime coordinates and observe the
various conservations laws that emerge from them.This comes under the domain of
Noether’s theorem and we will be coming across a lot of applications for them. If we
consider a group of transformations on the spacetime coordinates and on the scalar
field then we can observe that a conserved (divergenceless) current, whose existence
follows from the invariance of the action under the transformations. This gives rise to a
conserved (time independent) charge.

We also come to find that conservation of energy and momentum, then, holds for any
system whose Lagrangian ( and therefore action) does not depend upon on the
spacetime coordinates. This is in line with the observation above, that such a system
will not be able to exchange energy or momentum with the outside. Hence, for a scalar
field, the energy-momentum tensor is symmetric.

There are two reasons for wanting the canonical energy-momentum tensor to be
symmetric.
 ● One is that, according to the theory of general relativity, it is this tensor which
determines the curvature of space, according to Einstein’s field equations.
● The second reason for wanting a symmetric energy-momentum tensor becomes
apparent when we consider angular momentum. Hence, the conservation of
angular momentum requires the energy-momentum tensor to be symmetric.

COMPLEX SCALAR FIELDS AND THE ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD:

Now let us consider complex scalar fields and understand the various properties of the
system and observe whether the usage of complex scalar fields explains for any of the
four fundamental fields we encounter in real-life. We make the complex scalar fields to
be transformed by the Gauge transformation of the first kind. Based on the variation
principle, we obtain some results.The conserved quantity we obtain is identifies as the
electric charge. These are:

● It is a conserved quantity .i.e. The total electric charge doesn’t change with time.
● It contains no mention of ‘e’, the charge on a proton
● It is a classical quantity, not a quantum one; it contains no planck’s constant
● It is not ‘integral’, or ‘quantised’. In other words, it does not account for the fact
that real electric charges all seem to be multiple of a basic quantity.
● When the scalar fields are real .i.e. Their imaginary part is set equal to zero,
there is no conserved quantity. Hence, only the presence of complex scalar fields
gives rise to the properties of an electromagnetic field.

We have identifies that the conserved quantity is a result of the invariance of the action
under the gauge transformation. The gauge transformation of the first kind is not
dependent upon the local coordinates and hence, it has to be the same at all points
through spacetime: It is a global gauge transformation. So when we perform a rotation
in the internal space of the complex scalar field at one point, through a certain finite
ange, we must perform the same rotation at all other points at the same time. If we take
this physical interpretation seriously, we see that it is impossible t fulfill, since it
contradicts the letter and spirit of relativity, according to which there must be a minimum
time delay equal to the time of light travel. To get round this problem we simply abandon
the requirement that the angle is constant and write it as an arbitrary function of
space-time. This is called local gauge transformation, since it clearly differs from point to
point. It is also called a gauge transformation of the second kind.

As a result of making the angel of rotation locally dependent, we observe that the final
complex scalar field doesn’t transform covariantly and this causes the action to be no
longer invariant. To restore invariance under gauge transformations of the second kind,
we introduce a new 4-vector. We can see that this 4-vector that has been introduced is
quite similar to the vector potential that we have in concepts of electromagnetism. This
helps us in deriving the expressions of electric field and magnetic field. This helps us in
deriving the Maxwell’s 4 laws of electromagnetism.

We also obtain some findings from this. They are documented as follows:

● The gauge invariance requires that the gauge field be massless. In the usual
approach to the electromagnetic field, it is relativity which requires that the field is
massless, and therefore travels with the speed of light.
● The charge ‘e’ appears as a coupling constant via the covariant derivatives. We
can see that the complex field couples to the electromagnetic field with strength
‘e’. This brings to light the dual role of electric charge; it is both a conserved
quantity, as we originally stated and it measures the strength with which a
particle interacts with electric and magnetic fields. This dynamical aspect of
charge is a consequence of the ‘gauge principle’ and it is this which has come to
play such an important role in contemporary particle physics.
 CANONICAL QUANTISATION AND PARTICLE
INTERPRETATION

We considered the simplest relativistic equation, the Klein-Gordon equation, as a

1. The occurrence of negative energy solutions

For these reasons, we must abandon the interpretation of the Klein-Gordon equation as
a single-particle equation. What we shall do first is to consider the Klein-Gordon
equation as describing a field. Since the equation has no classical analogue, the scalar
field in Klein-Gordon equation is strictly a quantum field, but nevertheless we shall begin
by treating it as a classical field and shall find that the negative energy problem does not
then exist. We shall then take seriously the fact that scalar field is a quantum field by
recognising that it should be treated as an operator, which is subject to various
commutation relations analogous to those in ordinary quantum mechanics. This process
is often referred to as ‘second quantisation’. It turns out that the field quantisation has
an obvious interpretation as a many-particle theory.

Upon trying to calculate the Hamiltonian, we see that it is positive definite. Thus the
scalar field is not plagued by the negative energy problem which besets the
single-particle theory. We can also see that the final expression for the Hamiltonian is
similar to that of a harmonic oscillator. We also observe the presence of an annihilation
and creation operator.
Another striking feature that we observe to emerge is that there is a number density that
expresses the number of particles that may exist in the same momentum state. The
particles are therefore bosons. This validates the presence of bosons from a theoretical
standpoint. To validate the presence of fermions, we need to quantise the Dirac field.

Now we shall look at the complex Klein-Gordon field. We consider here the quantisation
of the field. The annihilation and creation operators have been introduced as the
respective coefficients of the positive and negative energy states. We obtain the
creation operators for both particles and antiparticles. Particles and antiparticles are
particles that carry the opposite charge, but have the same mass. We also obtain an
integral of ‘rho’ which in single-particle theory we wanted to interpret as the probability
density and were forced to reject it because it was not positive definite. We see then,
that in the quantised theory, ‘rho’ is re-interpreted as the charge density.
 CONCLUSIONS:

Canonical quantisation of the real and complex scalar fields, the Dirac field, the
electromagnetic field, and the massive spin 1 field are reviewed. For the scalar field, this
removes the negative energy problem which beset the single-particle interpretation of
the Klein-Gordon equation and results in a amnay-particle interpretation of the equation;
the particles are necessarily bosons. The complex field, on quantisation, yields particles
and antiparticles. Quantisation of the Dirac equation only gives positive definite energy if
the resulting particles obey Fermi statistics. This supports Dirac’s prediction of
antiparticles. Quantisation of the electromagnetic field suffers from difficulties posed by
gauge invariance. The quantisation procedure is outlined in both the radiation gauge, in
which there appear only the two physical (transverse) polarisation states, and in the
Lorentz gauge, in which all four polarisation states appear, the formalism being Lorentz
covariant. Quantisation of the massive vector field is straightforward and leads to the
expected particle interpretation.