Complementarity and phases in SU(3)

Abstract

Phase operators and phase states are introduced for irreducible representations of the Lie algebra su(3) using a polar decomposition of ladder operators. In contradistinction with su(2), it is found that the su(3) polar decomposition does not uniquely determine a Hermitian phase operator. We describe two possible ways of proceeding: one based in imposing SU(2) invariance and the other based on the idea of complementarity. The generalization of these results to SU(n) is sketched.