Reviews in Mathematical Physics

Connes' functional formula of the Riemannian distance is generalized to the Lorentzian case using the so-called Lorentzian distance, the d'Alembert operator and the causal functions of a globally-hyperbolic spacetime. As a step of the presented machinery, a proof of the almost-everywhere smoothness of the Lorentzian distance considered as a function of one of the two arguments is given. Afterwards, using a C*-algebra approach, the spacetime causal structure and the Lorentzian distance are generalized into noncommutative structures giving rise to a Lorentzian version of part of Connes' noncommutative geometry. The generalized noncommutative spacetime consists of a direct set of Hilbert spaces and a related class of C*-algebras of operators. In each algebra a convex cone made of self-adjoint elements is selected which generalizes the class of causal functions. The generalized events, called loci, are realized as the elements of the inductive limit of the spaces of the algebraic states on the C*-algebras. A partial-ordering relation between pairs of loci generalizes the causal order relation in spacetime. A generalized Lorentz distance of loci is defined by means of a class of densely-defined operators which play the role of a Lorentzian metric. Specializing back the formalism to the usual globally-hyperbolic spacetime, it is found that compactly-supported probability measures give rise to a non-pointwise extension of the concept of events.

In this paper we study neutral atoms of nuclear charge Z in a strong constant magnetic field of strength B. We improve the bound on confinement to the lowest Landau band given by Lieb, Solovej and Yngvason in [1]. This permits the calculation of the asymptotic form of the quantum current of atoms in the parameter region .

As a generalization of DHR analysis, the superselection sectors are studied in the absence of the spectrum condition for the reference representation. Considering a net of local observables in 4-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, we associate to a set of representations, that are local excitations of a reference representation fulfilling Haag duality, a symmetric tensor C*-category of bimodules of the net, with subobjects and direct sums. The existence of conjugates is studied introducing an equivalent formulation of the theory in terms of the presheaf associated with the observable net. This allows us to find, under the assumption that the local algebras in the reference representation are properly infinite, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of conjugates. Moreover, we present several results that suggest how the mentioned assumption on the reference representation can be considered essential also in the case of theories in curved spacetimes.

We study the time-dependent Schrödinger equation with matrix-valued potential presenting a generic crossing of type B, I, J or K in Hagedorn's classification. We use two-scale Wigner measures for describing the Landau–Zener energy transfer which occurs at the crossing. In particular, in the case of multiplicity 2 eigenvalues, we calculate precisely the change of polarization at the crossing. Our method provides a unified framework in which codimension 2, 3 or 5 crossings can be discussed. We recover Hagedorn's result for wave packets, from Wigner measure point of view, and extend them to any data uniformly bounded in L². The proof is based on a normal form theorem which reduces the problem to an operator-valued Landau–Zener formula.