Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2001-11-27
Class.Quant.Grav. 20 (2003) 2697-2714
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
27 pages ; published version of the paper
Scientific paper
10.1088/0264-9381/20/13/318
The long standing problem of the ordering ambiguity in the definition of the Hamilton operator for a point particle in curved space is naturally resolved by using the powerful geometric calculus based on Clifford Algebra. The momentum operator is defined to be the vector derivative (the gradient) multiplied by $-i$; it can be expanded in terms of basis vectors $\gamma_\mu$ as $p = -i \gamma^\mu \p_\mu$. The product of two such operators is unambiguous, and such is the Hamiltonian which is just the D'Alambert operator in curved space; the curvature scalar term is not present in the Hamiltonian if we confine our consideration to scalar wave functions only. It is also shown that $p$ is Hermitian and self-adjoint operator: the presence of the basis vectors $\gamma^\mu$ compensates the presence of $\sqrt{|g|}$ in the matrix elements and in the scalar product. The expectation value of such operator follows the classical geodetic line.
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