Past exam of the theoretical physics II course of the University of Cambridge / 2015 / Paper 1 / 4

For the canonical quantum Gibbs state,If $H|n⟩=E_n|n⟩$, its spectral form is $\rho =Z^{-1}{\sum }_n{e}^{-\beta E_n}|n⟩⟨n|$, with a sum over any degeneracy and an integral where a continuous spectrum needs one. It is Hermitian, positive and has unit trace, and it commutes with $H$. The formula presumes a well-defined finite partition function. At zero temperature a nondegenerate stable system approaches its ground-state projector; a degenerate ground space requires specifying the ensemble or preparation.

Put $g=k\hslash /(2m\omega )$, which has units of energy. In the original oscillator basis,Write $A=\tilde{a}$, $B=\tilde{b}$, $C_2=\cosh 2\theta$ and $S_2=\sinh 2\theta$. The transformed number and pair terms obeyHence the coefficient of $AB+A^{†}{B}^{†}$ is $g{C}_2-\hslash \omega S_2$, which vanishes for

This cancels the requested pair terms but does not diagonalize the printed Hamiltonian. Its number-conserving coupling also transforms:After the pair cancellation, the last creation terms have coefficient $-g{S}_2/2$, nonzero for $k\ne 0$. They create two quanta from the $A,B$ vacuum, so that vacuum is not an eigenstate of the literal Hamiltonian. This is an inconsistency in the ground-state assertion used by the next part, present in the printed PDF.

For the actual coordinate-coupled system, the normal coordinates $q_{\pm }=(x\pm y)/\sqrt{2}$ and their conjugate momenta diagonalize $H$ into independent oscillators withA normalizable ground state requires $|k|<m{\omega }^2$. Eliminating just the two indicated cross-pair terms is not sufficient to establish that ground state.

The stated annihilation conditions can be solved algebraically, even though (b) shows they are not ground-state conditions for the full printed Hamiltonian. Invert the canonical transformation:For $|{\psi }_{\lambda }⟩=\mathcal{N}{e}^{\lambda a^{†}{b}^{†}}|0,0⟩$, the commutators giveThus both $A$ and $B$ annihilate it precisely whenThe normalized two-mode squeezed vacuum isThe factorial from the exponential cancels those generated by the two creation operators. Normalization follows from a geometric series; the problem does not require its value, but it makes the subsequent partial trace explicit.

For comparison, the actual ground wave function of the printed stable Hamiltonian isIt follows directly from the two normal-mode Gaussian vacua. The proposed $|{\psi }_{\lambda }⟩$ is instead the exact ground state of the distinct pair-coupling Hamiltonian $\hslash \omega (a^{†}a+b^{†}b+1)+g(ab+a^{†}{b}^{†})$ under its stability condition. Omitting the remaining terms of $kxy$ silently would change the problem.

First trace the state explicitly specified in (c). orthogonality in the $y$ oscillator removes terms with different occupation numbers:For a thermal oscillator of frequency $\omega$, the ratio of successive Boltzmann weights is $e^{-\hslash \omega /(k_{B}T)}$. Consequently the conditional answer for that two-mode squeezed state isAt $\theta =0$ this is interpreted by the limit $T_{\mathrm{sq}}=0$. The reduced state is mixed for nonzero squeezing although the joint state is pure; its effective thermal statistics arise from entanglement, not from heating by a bath.

The ground-state identification must still be qualified. For the true coordinate-coupled ground state, direct normal-mode averages giveTheir ratio is $m^2{\omega }_{+}{\omega }_{-}$, rather than $m^2{\omega }^2$. Therefore this reduced state is not thermal with respect to the original bare frequency $\omega$ for $k\ne 0$. It does have an exact thermal representation for an effective oscillator of mass $m$ and frequencyThe corresponding occupation basis is that of $\nu$, not that of the original $a$. This follows by matching the Gaussian variances to $⟨x^2⟩=\hslash \coth [\hslash \nu /(2k_{B}T)]/(2m\nu )$ and its momentum counterpart. A direct reduced-Gaussian eigenfunction calculation gives the same effective frequency and geometric eigenvalues.^[ref]