The quantum harmonic oscillator has , with . Using and the canonical commutation relation gives
For , the Wronskian normalization is
Consequently
Equality requires and . The minimum-energy normalized oscillator mode is therefore
The constant phase is irrelevant. This mode also solves the oscillator equation of motion; an arbitrary squeezed mode would have larger vacuum energy.
For inflation, introduce the Mukhanov-Sasaki variable . Since depends only on conformal time,
Integrating the cross term by parts gives the canonical bulk action
up to the boundary term . The resulting Euler-Lagrange field equation and its Fourier transform are
At leading order in the slow-roll approximation, retain a small positive, nearly constant in , while approximating and as constant. Then , so
Strict exact de Sitter spacetime would have and would not supply the nonzero curvature kinetic coefficient assumed here; the calculation is the leading quasi-de Sitter limit, not a substitution of zero into .
For , the expansion correction is negligible and each canonical mode is a quantum harmonic oscillator of conformal frequency . The Bunch-Davies vacuum selects its positive-frequency, minimum-energy mode in that early subhorizon regime. It does not minimize an instantaneous Hamiltonian after the effective squared frequency has become negative outside the horizon.
A basis of exact solutions to the leading mode equation is and its complex conjugate. Write the normalized Bogoliubov transformation combination as
The Bunch-Davies vacuum boundary condition sets and up to phase. Hence
Substitution verifies the equation, and verifies the Wronskian normalization.
Dividing by gives the comoving curvature perturbation variance
This is the dimensional slow-roll curvature power spectrum in the printed normalization, with the reduced Planck mass set to one. The corresponding dimensionless cosmological power spectrum is , which is independent of at this order. Restoring the reduced Planck mass divides both power expressions by . Slowly varying background quantities are evaluated near each mode's horizon exit; their variation generates the small departure from exact scale invariance.
Fix a classical globally hyperbolic spacetime with metric signature ; in this solution take . A free real Klein-Gordon field can be specified by
where is its mass, its curvature coupling and the scalar curvature. Global hyperbolicity ensures a well-posed initial-value problem on a Cauchy hypersurface and the existence of retarded and advanced propagators. Thus compactly supported field and normal-derivative data determine a classical solution. This fixes the dynamics, but not a Fock vacuum.
For real solutions with suitable support or falloff, the symplectic form on scalar-field solutions is
with the future unit normal. The field equation makes the current conserved, so this symplectic form is independent of when boundary flux vanishes. Quantize the initial data by the canonical commutation relation: with and the delta function defined relative to , and the two equal-field commutators vanish. Equivalently, construct the field algebra using the causal propagator. A state on that algebra is additional input.
To construct a particle representation, complexify the classical solution space. Its conserved Klein-Gordon inner product is
It is indefinite on all complex solutions. Choose a complete positive-norm subspace and an orthonormal mode basis with , and . Such a choice is encoded by a compatible complex structure on the Klein-Gordon solution space. Its positive subspace gives the one-particle Hilbert space, and the associated bosonic Fock space contains symmetrized many-particle states. The field expansion is
The creation operator adds a particle in mode , the annihilation operator removes one, and the number operator is . For continuous mode labels the sums and Kronecker deltas become integrals and delta functions, or one can work with normalized wave packets.
The ambiguity is precisely that the field equation and global hyperbolicity do not select that positive subspace. A different normalized basis may mix and by a Bogoliubov transformation, and then its annihilation operators mix and . Its Fock vacuum and number operators differ. The Hadamard condition constrains physically acceptable short-distance singularities and allows local renormalization, but it still leaves many states. Hence there is generally no observer-independent particle count on an arbitrary dynamical geometry.
In a stable strictly stationary spacetime, a globally future timelike Killing vector field gives a preferred time translation. Fix its normalization and suitable boundary conditions, and choose positive-frequency solutions satisfying with . The corresponding positive spectral subspace gives the preferred vacuum state in a stationary spacetime. Unitary changes of basis within it leave the vacuum and the particle notion unchanged. This construction assumes a well-defined positive stationary generator; stationarity by itself is insufficient if becomes spacelike, as in a Kerr ergoregion, or if unstable or zero modes obstruct the ground-state construction. It selects a preferred ground state under the stated assumptions, not a unique state among all thermal and excited states.
If the geometry is suitably stationary in the asymptotic past and future, choose those preferred mode spaces separately, giving the in-vacuum and out-vacuum. Propagate the past modes through the intervening region using the field equation and compare them to the future modes using the conserved Klein-Gordon inner product. Adopt the convention
The canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation read and . Extracting the future annihilation operator with the same inner product gives
In the in-vacuum, only contributes to . Therefore the particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients is
Nonzero is the production of future particles from the past vacuum. Summing over future modes gives the total expected particle number when that sum is finite. For infinitely many modes, a Hilbert-Schmidt operator is the condition for unitary implementability between these pure bosonic Fock space representations; finite-volume or wave-packet calculations must respect the relevant measures and convergence. Particle production is determined by the negative-frequency mixing, rather than by identifying a single instantaneous vacuum throughout the time-dependent region.
Put and , and assume the homogeneous condensate is stable, so for nonzero modes. A real Bogoliubov transformation is
The canonical condition preserves the bosonic canonical commutation relations. Cancellation of pair terms requires . Therefore
The sign of follows that of . Normal ordering the transformed operators gives the bosonic Bogoliubov zero-point shift:
Rearranging the last two terms is exactly the requested form. Each momentum appears in the sums, so opposite-momentum pairs are not counted again separately.
The Bogoliubov quasiparticle dispersion is linear at low momentum when :
It is a gapless phonon of the condensate, unlike the free-particle quadratic spectrum. For a contact repulsion , the healing length controls crossover to the particle regime . A momentum-dependent potential can modify the higher-energy curve; the sketch uses the contact case and does not assume every interaction has that entire shape.
Figure 1.
Gapless phonon-to-particle crossover of the Bogoliubov dispersion for a repulsive contact interaction
. Details.
In the ground state of the diagonal Hamiltonian, . The Bogoliubov transformation therefore gives . Summing all nonzero momenta proves the quantum depletion of a Bose condensate:
The nonzero depletion arises from correlated pairs in the interacting quasiparticle vacuum, not thermally populated quasiparticles.
The printed expression is the zero-temperature result. At a nonzero temperature the complete leading-order expression instead has
The additional term is thermal depletion and cannot be discarded merely because the gas is condensed.
Quantize the real massless scalar field using the normalized in-modes:
Use the Klein-Gordon inner product convention that is antilinear in its first argument. Mode normalization gives
The out annihilation operator is . Applying the Bogoliubov transformation and the negative norm of conjugate modes gives
Both the complex conjugation and the minus sign follow from the inner-product convention. These operators annihilate the out-vacuum, but need not annihilate the in-vacuum. The particle number operator in out-mode is . In the in-vacuum, the only nonzero contraction is , obtained from the canonical commutation relation. Thus
This is particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients: mixing with negative-frequency in-modes produces out-particles even though no in-particles were present. For continuous mode labels the sum becomes an integral; normalized wave packets make an individual occupation number well-defined. No explicit collapse geometry or thermal spectrum is needed for this conclusion.
Under the bipartite spin rotation, the staggered magnetization becomes the uniform transformed . In the Bogoliubov transformation vacuum ,
The quantum depletion of Néel order therefore gives, with the zero modes regulated,
Near each zero of , the integrand behaves as , producing a logarithmic divergence. With a finite-size cutoff of order , the depletion grows as . Thus the large- expansion about a state with finite Néel order is not self-consistent in the infinite one-dimensional chain. The divergent expression is not a negative physical magnetization; it signals breakdown of that ordered approximation. It does not determine whether the exact excitation spectrum is gapped.
The canonical anticommutation relations are preserved precisely when the real matrix acting on is orthogonal. Directly,
The other relations are identical or vanish between disjoint pairs. Hence , and one may write , . This fermionic Bogoliubov transformation uses an ordinary rotation; bosonic mixing instead preserves a difference of squared coefficients.
Consider a real Klein-Gordon field on a prescribed globally hyperbolic spacetime, obeying with metric signature . A curvature coupling can be included as . A Cauchy hypersurface and compactly supported smooth data determine a unique solution; appropriate falloff can replace compact support. The real solution space has conserved symplectic form
Conservation follows by integrating the divergence-free current , with no boundary flux. On complex solutions the conserved Klein-Gordon inner product is
It is indefinite on the full complex solution space.
Choose a complete positive-norm mode subspace, with modes satisfying
Equivalently choose a compatible complex structure on the Klein-Gordon solution space. The mode labels may be continuous, in which case sums and Kronecker symbols become integrals and Dirac delta functions. Construct the one-particle Hilbert space from these modes and its bosonic Fock space. Promote the field to the operator-valued distribution
For a foliation with spatial metric determinant , the conjugate momentum density is . Mode completeness gives the equal-time canonical commutation relations
The Fock vacuum obeys , and counts particles in the chosen mode. For local products and a renormalized stress-energy tensor, physically admissible states are further restricted by the Hadamard condition. The field algebra exists without a preferred Fock vacuum.
A different admissible mode splitting can mix positive and negative norms:
Orthonormality imposes the canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation
The same field then has
Without a preferred notion of positive frequency, a nonstationary spacetime supplies no distinguished mode splitting: particle number and vacuum depend on the choice of modes, although the field equation and field algebra do not. With infinitely many modes the Bogoliubov transformation need not be unitarily implementable; finite total mixing requires a Hilbert-Schmidt operator .
For a stable strictly stationary spacetime, a chosen future globally timelike Killing vector field gives a preferred time translation. Choose modes with
When the corresponding conserved Killing energy is positive and the spectral problem has suitable boundary conditions and no problematic zero modes, this gives the preferred vacuum state in a stationary spacetime and particles relative to . Positive-frequency mode mixing within that same subspace leaves the Fock vacuum unchanged. Rescaling by a positive constant changes the frequency units but not their sign.
Stationarity alone, if it only means a Killing field timelike near infinity, is insufficient for a global unique particle interpretation. In the Kerr ergoregion, is spacelike, so positive frequency relative to does not automatically select a positive-norm subspace throughout the geometry; superradiance illustrates the difficulty. Additional vacuum and boundary choices remain necessary. The customary stationary answer therefore assumes a suitable timelike stationary flow and a stable positive-energy quantization; it does not assert that every stationary black-hole extension has one globally preferred vacuum.
Work first in units . Black-hole thermodynamics starts with the laws of black-hole mechanics. For a connected stationary regular Killing horizon, the Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics makes its surface gravity constant when the Einstein field equations and dominant energy condition hold. This parallels uniform equilibrium temperature. For neighboring stationary asymptotically flat four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell black holes, the First law of black-hole mechanics is
where is the horizon angular velocity and its electric potential relative to infinity. The last terms are rotational and electromagnetic work, analogous to the work terms in . The second law of black-hole mechanics, expressed by Hawking's area theorem, makes the total future horizon area nondecreasing for classical matter obeying the null energy condition and global assumptions such as strong asymptotic predictability. The third law of black-hole mechanics is an unattainability statement: subject to the usual regularity assumptions, the weak energy condition, and a bounded stress-energy tensor, no finite physical process reduces the surface gravity of a regular horizon to zero. It does not assert that extremal black holes have zero area or zero entropy.
Classical geometry alone fixes an analogy, not a nonzero physical temperature. Quantum field theory supplies Hawking temperature . Comparing the area term of the first law with gives for nonextremal holes, and hence the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Restoring physical constants,
Here restored is the physical acceleration surface gravity and is the squared Planck length. The first-law comparison determines the area coefficient, leaving an additive entropy constant unspecified; the displayed formula is the usual convention. Its area scaling, rather than ordinary volume scaling, signals that the available thermodynamic degrees of freedom of a gravitating system are constrained by the horizon geometry.
Particle production explains the quantum input. For a real scalar field obeying the massless covariant wave equation, the Klein-Gordon inner product on solutions is
The wave equation makes its current divergence-free, so the product is independent of a Cauchy hypersurface when the boundary flux vanishes. Use suitably normalized wave packets or the appropriate continuum distributions. Asymptotic past and future Minkowski spacetimes give preferred positive-frequency solution mode bases and , normalized by , and . Between those regions, a nonstationary geometry generally has no preferred positive-frequency splitting.
The mode bases are related by a Bogoliubov transformation,
The last identities follow from conservation of the Klein-Gordon inner product and are the canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation. Expanding the field in either complete basis and extracting its positive-frequency coefficient gives
Thus the state annihilated by every has
This particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients is nonzero when time evolution mixes positive and negative frequencies. It describes one state as vacuum in the early particle basis and populated in the late basis; it does not require an arbitrary choice of a vacuum at each intermediate time. For a finite implementable transformation the state remains a squeezed pure quantum state. In infinitely many modes, a common unitary bosonic Fock space implementation requires additional conditions, such as the beta map being a Hilbert-Schmidt operator; finite wave packet observables need not share every global divergence of an ideal continuum calculation.
For gravitational collapse, the future is not globally Minkowski: it contains a black hole. The relevant late out-basis includes modes reaching future null infinity together with modes entering the future event horizon. Modes on infinity alone are not a complete Cauchy basis. Nevertheless the same mode-mixing calculation determines the outgoing particle flux. Near a nonextremal horizon, the logarithm in the tortoise coordinate converts regular early null coordinates into the Hawking exponential ray map
where is the early affine null coordinate and is late retarded time at infinity. Backward propagation of a late outgoing mode gives a factor for . Its positive- and negative-frequency Fourier integrals differ by analytic continuation around the logarithmic branch. With a convergence regulator they reduce to
Taking gives the thermal ratio of Hawking Bogoliubov coefficients, . Combining this with the canonical normalization yields the bosonic occupation . Late-time wave packets turn formal continuum coefficients into a finite number flux.
A Schwarzschild black hole has , so this spectrum has . The exterior curvature potential partly reflects the outgoing modes. Its transmission probabilities are the greybody factors, giving, for one massless scalar species in the stationary late-time approximation,
Thus the horizon temperature is universal, while the spectrum received at infinity is not a perfect featureless blackbody radiation spectrum. The derivation assumes the near-horizon quantum state inherited from a regular collapse vacuum and ignores rapid backreaction over the timescale of the packets. Exponentially blueshifted precursor frequencies indicate the usual short-distance assumption in the semiclassical calculation, not an independently demonstrated quantum-gravity description of the endpoint.
The outgoing positive energy flux drives black-hole evaporation. At leading order for a large isolated Schwarzschild black hole, area scales as and temperature as , giving and a lifetime of order , with the coefficient depending on species and transmission factors. Its negative heat capacity of a Schwarzschild black hole, , means that it heats up as it loses mass and cannot be in stable canonical equilibrium with an unlimited thermal reservoir. The approximation fails when quantum-gravitational scales are reached and does not fix whether the endpoint is complete evaporation, a remnant, or something else.
Area loss does not contradict the classical area theorem, because the quantum stress-energy tensor need not obey the classical null energy condition; negative horizon energy accompanies the positive outgoing flux. The appropriate thermodynamic statement is the generalized second law, involving . Finally, Hawking radiation raises the black hole information paradox: if a pure quantum state completely evaporates into an exactly thermal mixed quantum state and its partners disappear, the result conflicts with ordinary unitary time evolution. Early outgoing radiation can be mixed simply because of its entanglement with interior modes while the complete state remains a pure quantum state; that fact alone is not information loss. Resolving the fate of all correlations through the evaporation endpoint requires more than the leading semiclassical flux calculation.
The Klein-Gordon inner product satisfies , so . Orthogonality of positive and negative modes in the field expansion therefore gives and .
Extracting the primed coefficient in the same way, and using antilinearity in the first entry,
Consequently the Bogoliubov transformation of the creation and annihilation operators is
The minus sign comes from the negative norm of the conjugate modes, and the complex conjugates come from the first argument of the Hermitian pairing.
Use the canonical commutation relation for the creation and annihilation operators and the transformation derived above. Directly,
Requiring these to equal and zero, respectively, and conjugating the equations yields the canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation:
The commutator of the primed creation operators then vanishes by taking adjoints. These are exactly the corresponding positive-mode norm and positive-negative orthogonality conditions for the Bogoliubov transformation. They are sufficient for these algebraic commutators whenever the sums are well defined. Infinitely many modes introduce further questions of convergence and whether the two choices admit a common bosonic Fock space representation; the matrix identities alone do not settle unitary implementability.
Choose the unprimed modes as the inertial positive-frequency modes in the far past, and the primed modes as those in the far future. In the in-vacuum and out-vacuum construction, is annihilated by every . The number of late-time quanta in mode is measured by . Expanding using the Bogoliubov transformation, the only surviving vacuum contraction is . Thus the particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients is
If , at least one row has positive norm and late-time observers detect particles. If , each is a linear combination of past annihilation operators and annihilates the same state, so all these occupation numbers vanish. The intervening nonstationary geometry can mix positive and negative frequencies, realizing vacuum ambiguity in a nonstationary spacetime even though the asymptotic inertial choices are unambiguous.
For infinitely many modes, the expressions are understood with suitable convergence or wave-packet regularization. The total expected number is , finite precisely when is a Hilbert-Schmidt operator in the specified orthonormal mode spaces. A divergent sum is not a finite occupation number in a common vacuum representation; it signals the extra infinite-dimensional issue rather than changing the finite-mode calculation.
For a real free scalar field on a globally hyperbolic spacetime, take
The Klein-Gordon equation has a well-posed initial-value problem on every Cauchy hypersurface. Its complex solution space carries the conserved Klein-Gordon inner product. Choose modes with
and expand
The canonical commutation relations produce the bosonic Fock space, and defines the chosen vacuum.
The choice of positive-frequency solutions is extra structure. In a time-dependent geometry there is no preferred time translation, so different choices mix with and give the vacuum ambiguity in a nonstationary spacetime. In a stationary spacetime, a timelike Killing vector field defines positive frequency by , , and hence the preferred vacuum state in a stationary spacetime.
If the spacetime is stationary in the remote past and future, define normalized in- and out-modes there. Their Bogoliubov transformation is
The expected out-particle number in the in-vacuum is
Thus nonzero beta coefficients measure particle creation by the intervening time dependence.
For part (a), the adjoint operator is
Using the canonical commutation relation ,
Thus and are the annihilation and creation operators of the quantum harmonic oscillator.
For part (b), write
Since and , differentiation of the unitary conjugation gives
The initial conditions are and . Solving this pair of linear ordinary differential equations gives the Bogoliubov transformation
This is the transformation implemented by the single-mode squeeze operator.
For part (c), invert the definition of :
The transformation above implies
The ground state has zero position and momentum means and variances and . Hence the squeezed vacuum state has
The reciprocal squeezing factors cancel, so
The state therefore continues to saturate the Heisenberg uncertainty relation.
The early and late stationary regions define distinct positive-frequency mode bases and hence an in-vacuum and out-vacuum. Write their Bogoliubov transformation as
The corresponding operators satisfy
Using and the canonical commutator gives the particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients:
Time dependence in the sandwich region can make , so the in-vacuum contains out-particles.
The four laws of black-hole mechanics closely parallel thermodynamics. The zeroth law says that the surface gravity is constant over a stationary Killing horizon. The first law is
The second law is Hawking's area theorem, under the null energy condition, and the third law of black-hole mechanics says that a regular extremal horizon with cannot be reached by a finite physical process. These match constancy of temperature in equilibrium, work terms, entropy increase, and unattainability of zero temperature.
Quantum field theory makes the analogy literal. A stationary horizon emits at the Hawking temperature
Comparing with the area term in the first law gives the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy
For a Schwarzschild black hole, and .
To see why particles are produced, quantize a real scalar field using the conserved Klein-Gordon inner product. In the asymptotically Minkowski past choose positive-frequency modes and write
The asymptotically Minkowski future supplies another positive-frequency basis and operators . In a nonstationary middle region there is no preferred timelike Killing vector and therefore no invariant positive-frequency split: the notion of particle is observer- and basis-dependent. The two mode bases are related by a Bogoliubov transformation,
so the corresponding operators mix annihilation and creation operators. The in-vacuum then contains
out-particles whenever .
For a black hole formed by collapse, late outgoing modes traced backwards toward the event horizon undergo an exponentially large blueshift. This produces a universal Bogoliubov mixing with
the Planck distribution at . Greybody scattering outside the horizon modifies the flux reaching infinity but not its characteristic temperature.
Hawking radiation gives a black hole negative heat capacity: it heats up as it loses mass and can evaporate in finite time. The generalized second law assigns entropy to the hole and states that this plus exterior entropy does not decrease. The enormous area entropy suggests microscopic horizon degrees of freedom. If semiclassical evaporation ends with only thermal radiation, an initially pure state appears to become mixed, producing the black hole information paradox. Resolving the endpoint, information recovery, and the microscopic origin of the area law are central constraints on quantum gravity.
Choose complete orthonormal sets of complex Klein-Gordon solutions and that have positive frequency with respect to the asymptotic timelike Killing fields in the remote past and future. Their normalization uses the conserved Klein-Gordon inner product:
The real quantum field has either mode expansion of a free field
Completeness relates the mode bases by the Bogoliubov transformation
and hence
Preservation of the canonical commutation relations requires
The past and future notions of positive frequency therefore define the generally different in-vacuum and out-vacuum. Nonzero means that the in-vacuum is a squeezed state containing out-particles.
Continue the incoming positive-frequency mode through as
Continuity of the mode and its first derivative gives the sudden frequency quench coefficients
The associated Bogoliubov transformation says that the incoming vacuum has expected outgoing occupation number
It vanishes when , as required when there is no change of geometry.
A strictly stationary spacetime has an everywhere timelike Killing field . Choose a complete orthonormal set of positive-frequency solutions satisfying
with positive Klein-Gordon inner product. Expand
with the sum replaced by an integral for continuous labels. Equivalently, the coefficients are projections using the Klein-Gordon product: and .
The stationary vacuum is uniquely selected, up to degeneracies and unitary changes of positive-frequency basis, by
for every . Acting with the constructs the bosonic Fock space, the symmetric direct sum of all particle-number sectors.
In a nonstationary spacetime no preferred timelike Killing flow exists, so there is no canonical split into positive and negative frequencies. Different splits mix creation and annihilation operators by Bogoliubov transformation and lead to the vacuum ambiguity in a nonstationary spacetime.
The quasiparticle vacuum contains physical particles at nonzero momentum because the Bogoliubov transformation mixes creation and annihilation operators. Their occupation is , and the depletion density is its momentum sum divided by the volume. At nonzero temperature an additional contribution is required; quantum depletion alone is a zero-temperature expression.