Abstract
The theme of doing quantum mechanics on all Abelian groups goes back to Schwinger and Weyl. This theme was studied earlier from the point of view of approximating quantum systems in infinite-dimensional spaces by those associated to finite Abelian groups. This Letter links this theme to deformation quantization, and explores the set of noncommutative associative algebra structures on the Schwartz-Weil algebra of any locally compact separable Abelian group. If the group is a vector space of even dimension over a non-Archimedean local fieldK, there exists a family of noncommutative (Moyal) structures parametrized by the local field and containing membersarbitrarily close to the classical one, although the classical algebra is rigid in the sense of deformation theory. The-products are defined by Fourier integral operators. The problem of constructing sucharithmetic Moyal structures on the algebra of Schwartz-Bruhat functions on manifolds that are locally likeK 2n is raised.
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In memory of Julian Schwinger