Past exam of the quantum field theory course of the University of Oxford / 2018 / 1 / b / Solution

The canonical momenta are ${\pi }_k={\dot{\varphi }}_k$, soDifferent species commute at equal times, so these products have no ordering ambiguity and $Q$ is Hermitian. Write ${\int }_{\mathbf{p}}=\int d^{3}p/(2\pi {)}^3$. Substituting the mode expansion of a free field and using the spatial Fourier transform identity givesSubtract the expression with species interchanged. The two-annihilator terms cancel after $\mathbf{p}\mapsto -\mathbf{p}$, as do the two-creator terms. Commuting different species in the remaining terms yieldsThere is no infinite vacuum contribution to the Noether charge to subtract: the contractions that would generate a species-diagonal constant are absent.

The bosonic canonical commutation relations giveDefine the creation operatorsTheir commutators with $Q$ are $[Q,c_{\pm }^{†}]=\pm c_{\pm }^{†}$. Since $Q|0⟩=0$, the one-particle states haveThe fixed-momentum states are delta-function normalized; a square-integrable wave packet of either species is a normalizable state with the same Noether charge eigenvalue. In this basis $Q={\int }_{\mathbf{p}}(c_{+}^{†}{c}_{+}-c_{-}^{†}{c}_{-})$, so it measures a difference of occupation numbers. The equal-time identity $i[Q,{\varphi }_1]={\varphi }_2$, $i[Q,{\varphi }_2]=-{\varphi }_1$ independently checks the sign against a.