Jacobi's principle and the disappearance of time

Journal Article · Mon Feb 15 04:00:00 EST 2010 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.81.044035· OSTI ID:21409322

Gryb, Sean ^[1]

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1. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5 (Canada) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 (Canada)

Jacobi's action principle is known to lead to a problem of time. For example, the timelessness of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation can be seen as resulting from using Jacobi's principle to define the dynamics of 3-geometries through superspace. In addition, using Jacobi's principle for nonrelativistic particles is equivalent classically to Newton's theory but leads to a time-independent Schroedinger equation upon Dirac quantization. In this paper, we study the mechanism for the disappearance of time as a result of using Jacobi's principle in these simple particle models. We find that the path integral quantization very clearly elucidates the physical mechanism for the timeless of the quantum theory as well as the emergence of duration at the classical level. Physically, this is the result of a superposition of clocks, which occurs in the quantum theory due to a sum over all histories. Mathematically, the timelessness is related to how the gauge fixing functions impose the boundary conditions in the path integral.

• OSTI ID: 21409322
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 81; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
EQUATIONS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
PARTICLE MODELS
QUANTIZATION
SCHROEDINGER EQUATION
SIMULATION
TIME DEPENDENCE
WAVE EQUATIONS