2009/10/05 by Manjit Bhatia, Bhatia, Manjit, P. Narayana Swamy +1
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mathematical and Theoretical Analysis #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0910.0825
submitted for publication, 8 pages
arxiv created 2009/10/05 · openalex publication_date 2009/10/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is well-known that the coordinate as a continuous variable, consisting of a set of all points between 0 and L contradicts the observability of measurement. In other words there might exist a fundamental length in nature, such as the Planck length λP, so that it is not possible to measure a position coordinate with accuracy smaller than this fundamental length. It is therefore necessary to investigate the formulation of quantum mechanics using only discrete variables as coordinates. To investigate all of quantum mechanics or any branch of physics from this approach is of course a daunting task and thus it is worthwhile to consider a specific simple problem in order to formulate the basic ideas. In this note we compare the solutions of Schrodinger equation for one-dimensional free particle under the usual space-time continuum with those that are obtained when space-time is assumed to be quantized using a simple model. For this purpose, we replace the derivatives occurring in Schrodinger equation with the corresponding discrete derivatives. We compute the probability density (and the probability current) under the two scenarios; they turn out to be quite different in the two cases. We also obtain the operator identity for the commutator [p,x]q under the assumption of quantized space-time and contrast it with the usual commutator [p,x].