Nontrivial local observables and impermeable and permeable boundary conditions for 1D KFGM particles

TL;DR

This paper introduces nontrivial local observables for the 1D Klein-Fock-Gordon equation, enabling the characterization of boundary conditions and conservation laws, especially distinguishing permeable and impermeable boundaries for confined particles.

Contribution

It proposes energy density and current density as local observables that satisfy a continuity equation, allowing characterization of boundary conditions in the 1D KFG system, which was not possible with traditional methods.

Findings

Energy densities form an unusual energy-momentum tensor.

Energy current density characterizes boundary permeability.

Conserved quantities depend on specific boundary conditions.

Abstract

Real solutions of the 1D Klein-Fock-Gordon (KFG) equation automatically cancel out the usual two-vector current density; consequently, the respective continuity equation is trivially satisfied, and a globally conserved quantity cannot be obtained. Additionally, distinguishing between impermeable and permeable boundary conditions (BCs) at a given point is not possible. We address these first-quantized conflicts by using the simplest nontrivial local observables, i.e., an energy density and an energy current density, which allows us to characterize a strictly neutral 1D KFG particle, i.e., a 1D KFG-Majorana (KFGM) particle, when it is confined to an interval and when it is restricted, e.g., in an interval with transparent walls. All the BCs for this system are extracted from the pseudo self-adjointness of the Feshbach-Villars (FV) Hamiltonian plus two Majorana conditions. We show that these energy densities are components of an unusual energy-momentum tensor and can satisfy a continuity equation, leading to a conserved quantity for all available BCs. Moreover, the energy current density can characterize all the BCs as either impermeable or permeable. In contrast, the commonly used energy current density -- a component of the usual energy-momentum tensor -- cannot characterize all the BCs. Additionally, this quantity and its respective energy density -- another component of the usual energy-momentum tensor -- may not lead to a conserved quantity. We also obtain the BCs for which the abovementioned densities and those commonly used are equally satisfactory. In fact, this occurs only for four impermeable BCs and a one-parameter set of permeable BCs. Our results highlight the important role played by the BCs when they are imposed on a system in which particles occupy a finite region.