A semiclassical Egorov theorem and quantum ergodicity for matrix valued operators

Abstract

We study the semiclassical time evolution of observables given by matrix valued pseudodifferential operators and construct a decomposition of the Hilbert space $L^2(\rz^d)\otimes\kz^n$ into a finite number of almost invariant subspaces. For a certain class of observables, that is preserved by the time evolution, we prove an Egorov theorem. We then associate with each almost invariant subspace of $L^2(\rz^d)\otimes\kz^n$ a classical system on a product phase space $\TRd\times\cO$, where $\cO$ is a compact symplectic manifold on which the classical counterpart of the matrix degrees of freedom is represented. For the projections of eigenvectors of the quantum Hamiltonian to the almost invariant subspaces we finally prove quantum ergodicity to hold, if the associated classical systems are ergodic.