Quantum Mechanics in Non'Inertial Frames with a Multi'Temporal Quantization Scheme: I) Relativistic Particles

TL;DR

This paper develops a multi-temporal quantization framework for relativistic particles in non-inertial frames, establishing a unitary evolution and frame-dependent Hamiltonians that incorporate inertial effects without altering the invariant mass spectrum.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-temporal quantization scheme for relativistic particles in non-inertial frames, with a gauge fixing approach and a frame-dependent effective Hamiltonian.

Findings

Existence of a frame-independent scalar product and unitary evolution.

Identification of a self-adjoint relative energy operator (invariant mass).

Derivation of a non-inertial Hamiltonian incorporating inertial potentials.

Abstract

We introduce a family of relativistic non-rigid non-inertial frames as a gauge fixing of the description of N positive energy particles in the framework of parametrized Minkowski theories. Then we define a multi-temporal quantization scheme in which the particles are quantized, but not the gauge variables describing the non-inertial frames: {\it they are considered as c-number generalized times}. We study the coupled Schroedinger-like equations produced by the first class constraints and we show that there is {\it a physical scalar product independent both from time and generalized times and a unitary evolution}. Since a path in the space of the generalized times defines a non-rigid non-inertial frame, we can find the associated self-adjoint effective Hamiltonian $\hat{H}_{ni}$ for the non-inertial evolution: it differs from the inertial energy operator for the presence of inertial potentials and turns out to be {\it frame-dependent} like the energy density in general relativity. After a separation of the relativistic center of mass from the relative variables by means of a recently developed relativistic kinematics, inside $\hat{H}_{ni}$ we can identify the self-adjoint relative energy operator (the invariant mass) ${\hat{\cal M}}$ corresponding to the inertial energy and producing the same levels for the spectra of atoms as in inertial frames. Instead the (in general time-dependent) effective Hamiltonian is responsible for the interferometric effects signalling the non-inertiality of the frame but is not interpretable as an energy like in the case of time-dependent c-number external electro-magnetic fields.