Quantum Mechanics

Kieran O’Rourke
March 28th, 2018

Contents
1 Gauge Theory – 2
1.0.1 Gauge Gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 Rambling Thoughts 4

3 kor Thoughts 4

4 Spin 5

5 Marvin Chester QM 6

6 Snippets 7

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 Abstract
Aucune grâce extérieure n’est complète si la beauté intérieure ne la
vivifie. La beauté de l’âme se répand comme une lumière mystérieuse
sur la beauté du corps. (Victor Hugo)

Gauss-Bonnet
“If in the first act you have hung
a pistol on the wall, then in the
following one it should be fired.”
Anton Chekhov’s rule on writing
is a good one.

A famous mathematical result from 1848—the Gauss-Bonnet theorem—declared

that the total curvature of a geometric shape was a topological feature, not
a geometric one. In other words, the sum of all the local curvatures of a
three-dimensional shape is the same for all topologically equivalent shapes
with the same surface area. Even more exciting, the total curvature is simply
given by 4(1 − g), where g is the number of holes in the shape.

Strong becomes Weak But it is a most profound fact of nature—indeed

the very reason why physics can make progress at many different levels—that
strongly interacting particles reorganize themselves to become more weakly
coupled particles of a new kind. Often they are simple bound states of the
old particles. But sometimes they are fantastically complicated collective
objects (for example, solitons) that nonetheless behave as legitimate particles,
with well[U+2010]defined charge, spin, statistics, and other properties we
attribute to particles.

1 Gauge Theory –
“Most people are other people.
Their thoughts are someone else’s
opinions, their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.”

Oscar Wilde

User Luke Pritchett has already given a good answer. For completeness,
I want to mention that there is an alternative way to think about this, one

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that I learnt very recently and that I found to be fascinating. I cannot help
but recommend the book *Quantum Gauge Theories: A True Ghost Story*,
by G. Scharf. It is short, concise and to the point. I read it a couple of days
ago, and I loved every page of it.
In its first chapter, the book introduces free fields. Here, the author argues
that the unphysical (longitudinal) polarisation of a spin j = 1 field is in fact
a gradient: Aµ = Aphysical
µ + ∂µ Λ. This determines the gauge transformation
for free fields to be Aµ → Aµ + ∂µ λ. So far, so good: this is just standard
gauge theory.
The key point is that, as the author shows, the gauge invariance of free
fields is in fact restrictive enough to determine the gauge transformation of
interacting fields. For example, the author does not introduce the (ad-hoc)
postulate that gauge fields are to transform according a Lie algebra: this is
in fact a conclusion rather than an axiom.
Furthermore, the author does not introduce the (ad-hoc) Higgs mechanism,
but rather derives it from the gauge invariance for free fields. All in all, in this
book there are (almost) no unjustified ingredients: no covariant derivatives,
no Lie Groups, no spontaneous symmetry breaking, etc. The only working
principle is the gauge invariance of free fields, Aµ → Aµ + ∂µ λ, which is
perfectly well-motivated. Everything else is derived as a consequence of this
simple principle.
Finally, and concerning OP’s main question, the author argues that the
theory is unitary if and only if it is gauge invariant, so this constitutes a proof
that unitarity requires the Higgs field to exist.
If this is not enough for me to convince the reader to read the book,
let me mention that the author does not introduce negative norm states
(which is also a rather unconvincing aspect of gauge theories), but he doesn’t
introduce non-covariant (Coulomb, axial) gauges either. Moreover, the author
explains from first principles how General Relativity emerges from a spin
j = 2 field, using only the gauge transformation for free fields (which is, as
before, completely natural from the point of view of unphysical polarisations).
Finally, the book follows the Epstein-Glaser formulation of QFT, so there are
no divergences nor counter-terms anywhere.
Needless to say, it is impossible for me to explain how this works in
practice: doing so would require for me to rewrite the whole book here. Let
me nevertheless quote a paragraph from the introduction that I hope will
pique the reader’s interest.
> In Chapter 4 the same method is applied to massive gauge fields. These
are the incoming and outgoing free fields which appear in the expansion of the
S-matrix (corresponding to the W ± - and Z-bosons in the electroweak theory).
We have no generation of mass by spontaneous symmetry breaking; instead,

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perturbative gauge invariance does the job. It forces us to introduce an
unphysical (Goldstone-like) and physical (Higgs) scalar fields and determines
their coupling. For example, the so-called Higgs potential need not be put in
by hand but follows naturally from third-order gauge invariance. humanity
iz da
1.0.1 Gauge Gravity pitz.

Hestenes paper online

In special relativity, Lorentz transformations are passive rotations ex-

pressing equivalence of physics with respect to different inertial reference
frames. Here, however, covariance under active rotations expresses local
physical equivalence of different directions in spacetime. In other words, the
rotation gauge principle asserts that spacetime is locally isotropic. Thus,
“passive equivalence” is an equivalence of observers, while “active equivalence”
is an equivalence of states. This distinction generalizes to the physical in-
terpretation of any symmetry group principle: Active transformations relate
equivalent physical states; passive transformations relate equivalent observers.

Displacement Gauge Principle (DGP): The equations of physics must

be invariant under arbitrary smooth remappings of events onto spacetime.

Rotation Gauge Principle (RGP): The equations of physics must be

covariant under local Lorentz rotations.

2 Rambling Thoughts
KOR: If two energy levels in an atom are separated by ~ω then any photon
of frequency different from ω won’t be absorbed. Absorption implies a spread
in ω, therefore a finite photon production time, as squeezing time spreads ω.

3 kor Thoughts
In dealing with equations in physics, think about what the terms encode;
referring to geometry, co-ordinates? Space? Also, relate all understanding to
symmetries.

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4 Spin
A system is only in an eigenstate of spin around an axis if a rotation about
the axis doesn’t change the system. Take z to be the direction of travel, then
for a spin 1 system the Sz = 0 state would be symmetric to a rotation about
an axis normal to the direction of travel. But this can only be the case if
the momentum is zero i.e. in the rest frame. If the system has a non-zero
momentum any rotation will change the direction of the momentum so it
won’t leave the system unchanged.
For a massive particle we can always find a rest frame, but for a massless
particle there is no rest frame and therefore it is impossible to find a spin
eigenfunction about any axis other than along the direction of travel. This
applies to all massless particles e.g. gravitons also have only two spin states.

A pair of electrons, being fermions, must have antisymmetric wave func-

tion, i.e. if ψ(ξ1 , ξ2 ) is a wavefunction describing the system, where ξ1 are
position and spin of electron 1 and ξ2 is position and spin of electron 2, then
ψ(ξ2 , ξ1 ) = −ψ(ξ1 , ξ2 ).

In the first approximation, spin degree of freedom can be separated from or-
bital degrees of freedom, so that the wavefunction becomes χ(s1 , s2 )φ(x1 , x2 ),
where si is spin of ith electron, and xi is position of ith electron. Here χ is spin
part of wavefunction, and φ is orbital part. To preserve total antisymmetry
of the wavefunction, χ and φ can be either symmetric, or antisymmetric. If
one is symmetric, the other must be antisymmetric.

The spin of a single electron can be up ↑ or down ↓. I.e. simplest op-

tions for a two-electron system could be ↑↑, ↓↓, ↓↑ and ↑↓. But the latter
two don’t honour the indistinguishability of electrons. To correctly include
indistinguishability of electrons, we should take symmetric and antisymmetric
linear combinations of these spin states.

Now we have four options, split in two variants:

a) Antisymmetric orbital and symmetric spin part of wavefunction

* ↑↑ * ↓↓ * ↓↑ + ↑↓

b) Symmetric orbital and antisymmetric spin part

* ↓↑ − ↑↓

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 From here we can see that symmetric spin part of wavefunction gives rise
to three different states — these are triplet states. If spin part of wavefunction
is antisymmetric, there’s only one such state — it’s the singlet state.

When one makes spectroscopic measurements with not very high resolu-
tion, states with different spins but same orbitals will appear to have the same
energies, so the spectral lines will appear the same. But if you put your system
in magnetic field, you’ll see that the spectral lines split according to spin
multiplicities: spin-singlet states will remain single lines, while spin-triplets
will split into three different spectral lines. This is the origin of such naming.

For Fermions, the wave function must be antisymmetric. Because this

makes the wave function vanish if both the fermions are in same state. Which
means it must change its sign if the fermions are exchanged.

5 Marvin Chester QM
I propose that, as used to describe the physical world, symmetry is so ele-
mental that it coincides with the concept of identity itself. The theory of
symmetry is the mathematical expression of the notion of identification and
that is why it is so effective as the basis of science. By identity is meant the
end result of identification. We know objects by their properties. Constitution
is what "confers to the carrier of a set of properties the dignity of an object",
says Elena Castellani (1998, p. 182). She ’constitutes’ an elementary object
of physics - electron, nucleon - from group theory by showing that invariance
under the spatio-temporal transformation group yields as characterization of
the object its energy, its linear momentum, its angular momentum and its
mass. To constitute something, then, is to assign to it labels of significance.
The significance arises from invariance properties.

- a perceived sameness under altered scrutiny - is just what captures the

notion of identity. When something is recognizably the same under many
perspectives we grant it identity. An identification is made by labelling. The
label tags what it is that we perceive as invariant. "If there were no invariants
we could not define ’identity’". Here we posit that it is precisely invariance
that identifies identity.

The logic of group theory is the logic of scientific inquiry so that the
mathematics we use to describe nature is a carefully coded expression of our

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experience.

Group theory is the mathematical formulation of internal consistency in

the description of things. We assume that the system being observed has an
intrinsic character independent of the observer’s perspective. It’s there. It
possesses an objective reality.
On this assumption - that it’s there - how the system is perceived under
altered scrutiny must be a matter of logic. Its appearance follows the logic
of intrinsic sameness (Section 7). The codification of that logic is a matter
of group theory. And its success in portraying the physical world is what
validates the assumption.

6 Snippets
In an effective field theory, all but the first few of the infinite set of parameters
in a nonrenormalizable theory are suppressed by huge energy scales and hence
can be neglected when computing low-energy effects.

Now a rotation is two reflections, and as I showed in Section 7.2.2, the

parity operation is reflection in a volume element, which amounts to n re-
flections in succession. So every isometry I’ve shown so far is a composition
of reflections. That’s no accident: the Cartan-Dieudonn´e theorem shows
that every isometry in an n-dimensional space is the composition of at most
n reflections along axes.

then an r-blade or simple r-vector is a product of r orthogonal (thus

anticommuting) vectors. A finite sum of r-blades is called an r-vector or
homogeneous multivector of grade r. (I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming.)
2-vectors are also called bivectors, 3-vectors trivectors. The set of r-vectors is
called Gr. Notice that this definition of simple r-vectors uses the geometric
product of orthogonal vectors, not the outer product of arbitrary vectors.

Universality is “an intriguing mystery,” said Terence Tao, a mathematician

at the University of California, Los Angeles who won the prestigious Fields
Medal in 2006. Why do certain laws seem to emerge from complex systems, he
asked, “almost regardless of the underlying mechanisms driving those systems
at the microscopic level?”

Like the Gaussian, the Tracy-Widom distribution exhibits “universality,”

a mysterious phenomenon in which diverse microscopic effects give rise to the

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same collective behavior.

Transformations that leave measured values unchanged are called gauge

transformations. it is a reference point symmetry. A symmetry in a unob-
servable quantity should of course simply have been called an unobservable
symmetry.

Susskind Lecture 7 special relativity Recipe for building field equa-

tions:
1. Base on an Action Principle.
2. Locality guaranteed by writing Differential Equations
3. Lorentz Invariant by writing scalars.
4. Gauge Symmetric.

The strange logic is that you cannot find an Action Principle for the
EM field using E and B + positions and velocities. You must introduce the
auxilliary potentials and Gauge Invariance is a property of the potentials.