(Noncanonical) field quantization by means of a single harmonic oscillator

Abstract

The paper is an extension of quant-ph/9912102. The new framework is tested on the 2-photon spontaneous emission and blackbody radiation. The new effects are rather subtle. The probability of the 2-photon emission is shown to consist of a product of several terms: One which is identical to this from standard quantum optics and the remaining ones formally resembling detector inefficiencies (here arising from nontrivial vacuum structure). The blackbody distribution is indistinguishable from the Planck law for T<T_{critical} but for T>T_{critical} the maximum of the distribution gets lowered and shifts towards higher frequencies. T_{critical} is a parameter that, in principle, should be observable. No normal ordering of operators is needed and vacuum energy is nonzero but finite. Vacuum is represented by a subspace spanned by ground states of the oscillators and is not equivalent to the cyclic vector of the GNS construction. The non-CCR algebra is discussed in more detail.