Off-Shell Quantum Mechanics as Factorization Algebras on Intervals

Abstract

We present, for the harmonic oscillator and the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ system, an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics that is `off-shell': it is based on classical off-shell configurations and thus similar to the path integral. The core elements are Batalin-Vilkovisky (BV) algebras and factorization algebras, following a program by Costello and Gwilliam. The BV algebras are the spaces of quantum observables ${\mathrm{Obs}}^q(I)$ given by the symmetric algebra of polynomials in compactly supported functions on some interval $I\subset \mathbb{R}$, which can be viewed as functionals on the dynamical variables. Generalizing associative algebras, factorization algebras include in their data a topological space, which here is $\mathbb{R}$, and an assignment of a vector space to each open set, which here is the assignment of ${\mathrm{Obs}}^q(I)$ to each open interval $I$. The central structure maps are bilinear ${\mathrm{Obs}}^q(I_1)\otimes {\mathrm{Obs}}^q(I_2)\to {\mathrm{Obs}}^q(J)$ for disjoint intervals $I_1$ and $I_2$ contained in an interval $J$, which here is the wedge product of the symmetric algebra. We prove, as the central result of this paper, that this factorization algebra is quasi-isomorphic to the factorization algebra of `on-shell' quantum mechanics. In this we extend previous work by including half-open and closed intervals, and by generalizing to the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ system.

79 pages, 2 figures