Compatibility of representations of quantum systems

Abstract

There is a natural equivalence relation on representations of the states of a given quantum system in a Hilbert space, two representations being equivalent iff they are related by a unitary transformation. There are two equivalence classes, with members of opposite classes being related by a conjugate-unitary (anti-unitary) transformation. These two conjugacy classes are related in much the same way as are the two imaginary units of a complex field, and there is a priori no basis on which to prefer one over the other in any individual case. This is potentially problematic in that the choice of conjugacy class of a representation determines the sign of energy and other quantities defined as generators of continuous symmetries of the system in question, so that it would appear that principles like conservation of energy for a compound system may hold or fail depending on relative choices of conjugacy class of representations of its subsystems. We show that for any finite set of quantum systems there are exactly two ways of choosing conjugacy classes of representations consistent with the usual tensor-product construction for representing the compound system composed of these. Each is obtained from the other by reversing the conjugacy of all the representations at once. The relation of unitary equivalence for representations of a single system is therefore uniquely extendible to representations of all systems that can interact with it.