Quantisation of a particle moving on a group manifold

Abstract

The Hilbert space of a free massless particle moving on a group manifold is studied in details using canonical quantisation. While the simplest model is invariant under a global symmetry, $G \times G$, there is a very natural way to ``factorise" the theory so that only one copy of the global symmetry is preserved. In the case of $G=SU(2)$, a simple deformation of the quantised theory is proposed to give a realisation of the quantum group, $U_t(SL(2))$. The symplectic structures of the corresponding classical theory is derived. This can be used, in principle, to obtain a Lagrangian formulation for the $U_t(SL(2))$ symmetry.