Jauch-Piron system of imprimitivities for phonons. I. Localizability in discrete space

Abstract

This paper is devoted to a discussion of the notion of localizability for phonons, i.e., quasiparticles arising from the harmonic vibrations of a system ofn atoms bound to one another by elastic forces. The natural tools for the analysis of localizability are the projection operatorsÊ(Δ) acting on the Hilbert space of one-phonon states, where Δ is an arbitrary subset of the set that consists ofn vectors specifying the equilibrium positions ofn atoms. The expectation value ofÊ(Δ) is the probability that the phonon belongs to the atoms whose equilibrium positions are characterized by the elements of Δ. For a strongly localizable phonon all of the projection operatorsÊ(Δ) commute with one another, whereas in the case of a weakly localizable phonon the operatorsÊ(Δ₁) andÊ(Δ₂) do not commute when Δ₁ and Δ₂ overlap. With the aid of the Jauch-Piron quantum theory of localization in space, the present paper describes the method of obtainingÊ(Δ) and also shows that if in the system ofn atoms there exist normal modes of zero frequency, then the phonon is only weakly localizable. Given the explicit expression forÊ(Δ), one can define the number-of-phonons operator as well as the quasiparticle analogue (given in a companion paper) of the Wigner distribution function.