This volume presents a systematic and mathematically rigorous exposition of methods for studying linear partial differential equations. It focuses on quantization of the corresponding objects (states, observables and canonical transformations) in the phase space. The quantization of all three types of classical objects is carried out in a unified w

Most of our present understanding of the elementary building blocks of matter and the forces between them is based on the quantized version of the field theories which are locally symmetric under gauge transformations. The present set of lecture notes gives both a status report and a survey of recent advances for the most important quantization methods in the field theories for elementary particle physics. The first part of the book introduces light-cone quantization as an interesting alternative to the commonly used covariant perturbation theory and functional-integral methods. Next, a general formalism for quantizing systems with constraints, the projection-operator approach, is presented and structural aspects of the renormalization problem for gauge invariant field theories are discussed. Finally, the mathematics underlying the functional-integral quantization is reviewed. Suitable as a reference for researchers in the field, the book will prove particularly useful for lecturers and graduate students in search of additional reading beyond the standard texts on quantum field theory.

The Method of Second Quantization deals with the method of second quantization and its use to solve problems of quantum mechanics involving an indefinite number of particles, mainly in field theory and quantum statistics. Topics covered include operations on generating functionals; linear canonical transformations; quadratic operators; and Thirring's four-fermion model. State spaces and the simplest operators are also described. This book is comprised of four chapters and begins with an overview of the method of second quantization and the relevant notations. The first chapter focuses on the connections between vectors and functionals and between operators and functionals, together with fundamental rules for operating on functionals. The reader is then introduced to the so-called quadratic operators and the linear canonical transformations closely connected with them. Quadratic operators reduced and not reduced to normal form are considered. The final chapter discusses the Thirring model, the simplest relativistically invariant model in quantum field theory, and explains why it includes infinities. This monograph will be of value to students and practitioners of mathematical physics.

This is a textbook on stochastic quantization which was originally proposed by G. Parisi and Y. S. Wu in 1981 and then developed by many workers. I assume that the reader has finished a standard course in quantum field theory. The Parisi-Wu stochastic quantization method gives quantum mechanics as the thermal-equilibrium limit of a hypothetical stochastic process with respect to some fictitious time other than ordinary time. We can consider this to be a third method of quantization; remarkably different from the conventional theories, i. e, the canonical and path-integral ones. Over the past ten years, we have seen the technical merits of this method in quantizing gauge fields and in performing large numerical simulations, which have never been obtained by the other methods. I believe that the stochastic quantization method has the potential to extend the territory of quantum mechanics and of quantum field theory. However, I should remark that stochastic quantization is still under development through many mathematical improvements and physical applications, and also that the fictitious time of the theory is only a mathematical tool, for which we do not yet know its origin in the physical background. For these reasons, in this book, I attempt to describe its theoretical formulation in detail as well as practical achievements.

Second Quantization-Based Methods in Quantum Chemistry presents several modern quantum chemical tools that are being applied to electronic states of atoms and molecules. Organized into six chapters, the book emphasizes the quantum chemical methods whose developments and implementations have been presented in the language of second quantization. The opening chapter of the book examines the representation of the electronic Hamiltonian, other quantum-mechanical operators, and state vectors in the second-quantization language. This chapter also describes the unitary transformations among orthonormal orbitals in an especially convenient manner. In subsequent chapters, various tools of second quantization are used to describe many approximation techniques, such as Hartree-Fock, perturbation theory, configuration interaction, multiconfigurational Hartree-Fock, cluster methods, and Green’s function. This book is an invaluable source for researchers in quantum chemistry and for graduate-level students who have already taken introductory courses that cover the fundamentals of quantum mechanics through the Hartree-Fock method as applied to atoms and molecules.

Due to the rapidly increasing need for methods of data compression, quantization has become a flourishing field in signal and image processing and information theory. The same techniques are also used in statistics (cluster analysis), pattern recognition, and operations research (optimal location of service centers). The book gives the first mathematically rigorous account of the fundamental theory underlying these applications. The emphasis is on the asymptotics of quantization errors for absolutely continuous and special classes of singular probabilities (surface measures, self-similar measures) presenting some new results for the first time. Written for researchers and graduate students in probability theory the monograph is of potential interest to all people working in the disciplines mentioned above.

This book is a systematic study of the classical and quantum theories of gauge systems. It starts with Dirac's analysis showing that gauge theories are constrained Hamiltonian systems. The classical foundations of BRST theory are then laid out with a review of the necessary concepts from homological algebra. Reducible gauge systems are discussed, and the relationship between BRST cohomology and gauge invariance is carefully explained. The authors then proceed to the canonical quantization of gauge systems, first without ghosts (reduced phase space quantization, Dirac method) and second in the BRST context (quantum BRST cohomology). The path integral is discussed next. The analysis covers indefinite metric systems, operator insertions, and Ward identities. The antifield formalism is also studied and its equivalence with canonical methods is derived. The examples of electromagnetism and abelian 2-form gauge fields are treated in detail. The book gives a general and unified treatment of the subject in a self-contained manner. Exercises are provided at the end of each chapter, and pedagogical examples are covered in the text.