ZMATH



0941.17017
Gotay, Mark J.; Grundling, Hendrik B.
Nonexistence of finite-dimensional quantizations of a noncompact symplectic manifold. (English)
[CA] Kolár, Ivan (ed.) et al., Differential geometry and applications. Proceedings of the 7th international conference, DGA 98, and satellite conference of ICM in Berlin, Brno, Czech Republic, August 10-14, 1998. Brno: Masaryk University. 593-596 (1999). [ISBN 80-210-2097-0/pbk]

A basic algebra of observables $\frak b$ on a symplectic manifold $M$ is a Lie subalgebra of $C^\infty(M)$ which is finitely generated, transitive and separating, the Hamiltonian vector fields $X_f$ of elements $f\in\frak b$ are complete, and which is minimal with respect to the previous requirements. Note that $\frak b$ is separating means that elements of $\frak b$ separate globally points of $M$, and transitivity means that the Hamiltonian vector fields $\{ X_f:f\in{\frak b}\}$ span the tangent bundle $TM$. \par The main result states that finite-dimensional basic algebras on noncompact symplectic manifolds do not admit faithful representations by skew-hermitian matrices. This can be understood as a rigorous proof that quantizations of a noncompact symplectic manifold, if exist, have to be infinite-dimensional.
[ Janusz Grabowski (Warszawa) ]

MSC 2000:
*17B63 Poisson algebras
53D17 Poisson manifolds
37J05 Relations with symplectic geometry and topology
81S99 General quantum mechanics and problems of quantization

Keywords: quantization; Poisson algebra