Pith. sign in

REVIEW 2 cited by

Topics in Koopman-von Neumann Theory

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv quant-ph/0301172 v1 pith:EF2NJNVZ submitted 2003-01-30 quant-ph

Topics in Koopman-von Neumann Theory

classification quant-ph
keywords thesisclassicalfirstformsneumannpartsecondspace
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

In this thesis we study several features of the operatorial approach to classical mechanics pionereed by Koopman and von Neumann (KvN) in the Thirties. In particular in the first part we study the role of the phases of the KvN states. We analyze, within the KvN theory, the two-slit experiment and the Aharonov-Bohm effect and we make a comparison between the classical and the quantum case. In the second part of the thesis we study the extension of the KvN formalism to the space of forms and Jacobi fields. We first show that all the standard Cartan calculus on symplectic spaces can be performed via Grassmann variables or via suitable combinations of Pauli matrices. Second we study the extended Hilbert space of KvN which now includes forms and prove that it is impossible to have at the same time a positive definite scalar product and a unitary evolution. Clear physical reasons for this phenomenon are exhibited. We conclude the thesis with some work in progress on the issue of quantization.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. The History of Hilbert-Space Formulations of Classical Physics

    physics.hist-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    Classical wave functions with ρ = |ψ|² were introduced after Koopman and von Neumann, probably by Schönberg, so calling them 'KvN waves' is a misattribution.

  2. Classical and quantum mechanics across representations: an operational reading of the Wigner Weyl correspondence

    quant-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    The robust classical–quantum boundary across Wigner–Weyl representations is noncommutative star-multiplication, not negativity or the choice of phase-space versus Hilbert-space language.