Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2002. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-61). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri State University, 2008. / "August 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaf 51). Also available online.

Symmetry has played a crucial role in our understanding of physical systems. In this thesis, we review several works based on investigating the symmetry properties of theories. We examine and improve the Noether's theorem and the coset construction, both powerful tools when studying the symmetry aspects of a physical system. We manipulate the intrinsic ambiguities in the derivation of the stress-energy tensor using Noether's theorem to systematically compute, without any guesswork, the necessary ``improvement terms'' which make the tensor satisfy certain algebraic properties such as symmetry and tracelessness, even off-shell. We then construct a new type of coset construction, which can accommodate relativistic particles with arbitrary spins. This is the first work we know of to incorporate arbitrary spin degrees of freedom into coset construction. We then present two interesting examples of condensed matter systems described by effective field theories that come from spontaneous symmetry breaking. For the so-called framid, we present the peculiar behavior of its stress-energy tensor that it is Lorentz-invariant even though the system breaks Lorentz boosts spontaneously. An analogy is drawn to the cosmological constant problem since the vacuum energy there and the Lorentz-breaking terms here are all surprisingly zero. Lastly, we describe how the inflation of the universe can be driven by a solid. We focus on the icosahedral inflation model, where the isotropies of background evolution and scalar power spectrum are guaranteed although the system is anisotropic. We discuss some observational signatures of this model.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of symmetry in physics and mathematics. Symmetry arguments play a central role in a broad range of problems from simplifying a system of linear equations to a deep role in organizing the fundamental principles of physics. They are used, for instance, in Noether’s theorem to find the consequences of symmetry of a dynamics. For many systems of interest, the dynamics are sufficiently complicated that one cannot hope to characterize their evolution completely, whereas by appealing to the symmetries of the dynamical laws one can easily infer many useful results. In part I of this thesis we study the problem of finding the consequences of symmetry of a (possibly open) dynamics from an information-theoretic perspective. The study of this problem naturally leads us to the notion of asymmetry of quantum states. The asymmetry of a state relative to some symmetry group specifies how and to what extent the given symmetry is broken by the state. Characterizing these is found to be surprisingly useful to constrain which final states of the system can be reached from a given initial state. Another motivation for the study of asymmetry comes from the field of quantum metrology and relatedly the field of quantum reference frames. It turns out that the degree of success one can achieve in many metrological tasks depends only on the asymmetry properties of the state used for metrology. We show that some ideas and tools developed in the field of quantum information theory are extremely useful to study the notion of asymmetry of states and therefore to find the consequences of symmetry of an open or closed system dynamics. In part II of this thesis we present a novel application of symmetry arguments in the field of quantum estimation theory. We consider a family of multi-copy estimation problems wherein one is given n copies of an unknown quantum state according to some prior distribution and the goal is to estimate certain parameters of the given state. In particular, we are interested to know whether collective measurements are useful and if so to find an upper bound on the amount of entanglement which is required to achieve the optimal estimation. We introduce a new approach to this problem by considering the symmetries of the prior and the symmetries of the parameters to be estimated. We show that based on these symmetries one can find strong constraints on the amount of entanglement required to implement the optimal measurement. In order to infer properties of the optimal estimation procedure from the symmetries of the parameters and the prior we come up with a generalization of Schur-Weyl duality. Just as Schur-Weyl duality has many applications to quantum information theory and quantum algorithms so too does this generalization. In this thesis we explore some of these applications.

Η μελέτη συνήθων διαφορικών εξισώσεων συχνά χρησιμοποιεί μεθόδους γνωστές από την κλασική Μηχανική. Η πιο γνωστή από αυτές ϕέρει το όνομα του εμπνευστή της, του Ιρλανδού Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805 - 1865), κι αποτελεί μία μαθηματικά πλήρη ϑεωρία για τα λεγόμενα συστήματα Hamilton. Πρόσφατα, όμως, δομές τύπου Hamilton άρχισαν να μελετώνται και σε συστήματα μερικών διαφορικών εξισώσεων, συγκεκριμένα εξισώσεων εξέλιξης. Σκοπός της παρούσας εργασίας είναι η ανάπτυξη της ϑεωρίας Hamilton για τα συστήματα αυτά και ιδιαίτερα για τις περιπτώσεις εκείνες που εμφανίζουν ολοκληρωσιμότητα. Η γραμμή που ϑα ακολουθήσουμε έχει ως κύριο οδηγό τις συμμετρίες των διαφορικών εξισώσεων, ένα πολύ χρήσιμο εργαλείο για την επίλυση οποιασδήποτε διαφορικής εξίσωσης, που πρώτος ανέδειξε ο Νορβηγός Marius Sophus Lie (1842 - 1899). Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο λοιπόν γίνεται μία εισαγωγή στην ϑεωρία των (γεωμετρικών) συμμετριών, ενώ επίσης παρουσιάζονται τρόποι επίλυσης και γενικότερα αντιμετώπισης ξεχωριστά συνήθων και μερικών διαφορικών εξισώσεων με την χρήση των ομάδων συμμετρίας τους. Το δεύτερο κεφάλαιο ϕιλοδοξεί να αναδείξει την αντιστοιχία μεταξύ των συμμετριών ενός συστήματος διαφορικών εξισώσεων και των νόμων διατήρησης στους οποίους υπακούει το ϕυσικό σύστημα που περιγράφουν. Αυτό είναι και το περιεχόμενο του ϑεωρήματος που διατύπωσε η Γερμανίδα Amalie Emmy Noether (1882 - 1935), το οποίο ισχύει και στην ειδική περίπτωση των συστημάτων Hamilton. Το πρώτο, λοιπόν, ϐήμα προς αυτήν την κατεύθυνση είναι η επέκταση της έννοιας της συμμετρίας στις λεγόμενες γενικευμένες συμμετρίες, με ιδιαίτερη έμφαση στις εξισώσεις εξέλιξης. Το δεύτερο είναι ουσιαστικά μια μικρή εισαγωγή στην ϑεωρία μεταβολών, απαραίτητη όμως και για τα επόμενα κεφάλαια. Την γνωστή ϑεωρία Hamilton για πεπερασμένα συστήματα, συστήματα δηλαδή συνήθων διαϕορικών εξισώσεων πραγματεύεται το τρίτο κεφάλαιο. Σκοπός του κεφαλαίου αυτού δεν είναι η πλήρης περιγραφή της ϑεωρίας, αλλά η διατύπωση των εννοιών εκείνων που μπορούν να γενικευτούν και στην περίπτωση των απειροδιάστατων συστημάτων. Για τον λόγο αυτό έχει προτιμηθεί η κάπως πιο αφηρημένη και σίγουρα όχι τόσο συνηθισμένη περιγραφή στο πλαίσιο της γεωμετρίας Poisson. Αντιμετωπίζοντας τις συμπλεκτικές δομές, οι οποίες επικρατούν στην ϐιβλιογραφία, ως μια υποπερίπτωση των γενικότερων δομών Poisson, έχουμε ουσιαστικά αποφύγει τελείως την χρήση διαφορικών μορφών, στρέφοντας περισσότερο την προσοχή στις ομάδες συμμετρίας Hamilton, μία έννοια-κλειδί για την ολοκληρωσιμότητα των συστημάτων αυτών. Στο τέταρτο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζουμε το κεντρικό ϑέμα αυτής της εργασίας, δηλαδή τη ϑεωρία Hamilton για απειροδιάστατα συστήματα εξισώσεων εξέλιξης, και ειδικότερα την ολοκληρωσιμότητα τους. Τα ϐασικά μας εργαλεία είναι αυτά που παρουσιάστηκαν νωρίτερα, δηλαδή οι (γενικευμένες) συμμετρίες και οι νόμοι διατήρησης από την μια, και τα διανυσματικά πεδία Hamilton από την άλλη που μας επιτρέπουν την μεταξύ τους αντιστοιχία. Με ϐάση αυτά τα εργαλεία ϐλέπουμε πως η μελέτη πολλών μερικών διαφορικών εξισώσεων ϑυμίζει εκείνων των κλασικών συστημάτων Hamilton της Μηχανικής. Στην παραπάνω αντιστοιχία ϐασίζεται και η έννοια των δι-Χαμιλτονικών συστημάτων, την οποία μελετάμε στο πέμπτο κεφάλαιο. Μέσα από το παράδειγμα της εξίσωσης Korteweg-de Vries αναδεικνύονται τα πλεονεκτήματα της εύρεσης δύο διαφορετικών, ανεξάρτητων εκφράσεων Hamilton, που οδηγούν στην κατασκευή άπειρων συμμετριών ή ακόμα και νόμων διατήρησης. Η διπλή αυτή δομή Hamilton των απειροδιάστατων συστημάτων συνδέεται, όπως ϑα δούμε, με την ολοκληρωσιμότητα είτε με την έννοια του Liouville, είτε με διάφορα άλλα κριτήρια. Γνωστά παραδείγματα παραθέτονται, πέρα από την KdV, όπως η εξίσωση Schroedinger, η modified KdV, κι άλλες μη γραμμικές κυματικές εξισώσεις. Στο έκτο και τελευταίο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζουμε την περίπτωση, όπου ένα σύστημα επιδέχεται πολλαπλή δομή Hamilton. Τέτοιου είδους συστήματα μας επιτρέπουν να δούμε προϋπάρχουσες έννοιες από την ϑεωρία Hamilton, αλλά κι όχι μόνο, κάτω από μία άλλη σκοπιά. Γι΄ αυτό κι έχουν απασχολήσει την σύγχρονη ϐιβλιογραφία, πάνω στην οποία κάνουμε μία σύντομη επισκόπηση, τόσο στο κομμάτι εκείνο που ασχολείται με τις πρόσφατες εξελίξεις της ϑεωρίας Hamilton, όσο και με την μελέτη γενικότερα της ολοκληρωσιμότητας των μερικών διαφορικών εξισώσεων. / The study of ordinary differential equations has often borrowed well known methods from Classical Mechanics. The most popular one is due to Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865), which has become a complete mathematical theory for the so-called Hamiltonian systems. Recently, Hamiltonian structures have been developed for systems of partial differential equations, particularly evolution equations. The purpose of this master thesis is to present the Hamiltonian theory for this type of systems, and especially for integrable equations. Our description is based on Symmetries, a useful tool for solving any differential equation, first discovered by Marius Sophus Lie (1842-1899). Thus, an introduction to his theory of point or geometrical symmetries is given in the first chapter, along with some applications, such as integration of ordinary differential equations and group-invariant solutions of partial differential equations. In the second chapter we discuss the connection between the symmetries of a system of differential equations and the conservation laws of the physical problem that they describe. That is the content of Noether’s theorem, which also holds in the particular case of Hamiltonian systems. The first step towards this direction is the generalization of the basic symmetry concept, and the second one is a small introduction to variational problems, also necessary for the next chapters. The well known Hamilton’s theory for finite systems is presented in the third chapter. We do not wish to describe the whole theory in full detail but only focus on these points that will be needed to handle the infinite-dimensional case. Therefore, we introduce the general notion of a Poisson structure, instead of the more familiar symplectic one. Avoiding the use of differential forms almost entirely, we concentrate on the Hamiltonian symmetries and their key role in the reduction theory of these systems. In Chapter 4 lies the heart of the subject, the Hamiltonian approach to a system of evolution equations. We start off by drawing an analogy between first order ordinary differential equations and evolution equations, and then we establish the fundamental concepts of the Hamiltonian franework, i.e. the Poisson bracket and Hamiltonian vector fields. Through another version of Noether’s theorem, we are able to explore, once again, the correspondence between (generalized) symmetries and conservation laws. Thus, we see that the study of several partial differential equations is in some way very close to the one of classical mechanical Hamiltonian systems. Evolution equations possessing, not just one, but two Hamiltonian structures, called bi-Hamiltonian systems, are discussed in the next chapter. The advantages of finding two different, independent Hamiltonian expressions are pointed out through the example of the Korteweg-de Vries equation. We show that such systems have an infinite number of symmetries and, subject to a mild compatibility condition, they also have an infinite number of conservation laws. Therefore they are completely integrable in Liouville’s sense. Several examples are presented, besides the KdV equation, such as the nonlinear Schroedinger, the modified KdV and other nonlinear wave equations. The final chapter is devoted to some of the recent publications, regarding multi-Hamiltonian evolution equations. This type of systems puts the classical Hamiltonian theory of ordinary differential equations in a new perspective and at the same time allows us to draw some connections with other integrability criteria used in the field of partial differential equations.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of symmetry in physics and mathematics. Symmetry arguments play a central role in a broad range of problems from simplifying a system of linear equations to a deep role in organizing the fundamental principles of physics. They are used, for instance, in Noether’s theorem to find the consequences of symmetry of a dynamics. For many systems of interest, the dynamics are sufficiently complicated that one cannot hope to characterize their evolution completely, whereas by appealing to the symmetries of the dynamical laws one can easily infer many useful results. In part I of this thesis we study the problem of finding the consequences of symmetry of a (possibly open) dynamics from an information-theoretic perspective. The study of this problem naturally leads us to the notion of asymmetry of quantum states. The asymmetry of a state relative to some symmetry group specifies how and to what extent the given symmetry is broken by the state. Characterizing these is found to be surprisingly useful to constrain which final states of the system can be reached from a given initial state. Another motivation for the study of asymmetry comes from the field of quantum metrology and relatedly the field of quantum reference frames. It turns out that the degree of success one can achieve in many metrological tasks depends only on the asymmetry properties of the state used for metrology. We show that some ideas and tools developed in the field of quantum information theory are extremely useful to study the notion of asymmetry of states and therefore to find the consequences of symmetry of an open or closed system dynamics. In part II of this thesis we present a novel application of symmetry arguments in the field of quantum estimation theory. We consider a family of multi-copy estimation problems wherein one is given n copies of an unknown quantum state according to some prior distribution and the goal is to estimate certain parameters of the given state. In particular, we are interested to know whether collective measurements are useful and if so to find an upper bound on the amount of entanglement which is required to achieve the optimal estimation. We introduce a new approach to this problem by considering the symmetries of the prior and the symmetries of the parameters to be estimated. We show that based on these symmetries one can find strong constraints on the amount of entanglement required to implement the optimal measurement. In order to infer properties of the optimal estimation procedure from the symmetries of the parameters and the prior we come up with a generalization of Schur-Weyl duality. Just as Schur-Weyl duality has many applications to quantum information theory and quantum algorithms so too does this generalization. In this thesis we explore some of these applications.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第19108号 / 情博第554号 / 新制||情||98(附属図書館) / 32059 / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科知能情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 阿久津 達也, 教授 西田 豊明, 教授 山本 章博 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DFAM

Conservation laws play an important role in science. The aim of this thesis is to provide an overview and develop new methods for constructing conservation laws using Lie group theory. The derivation of conservation laws for invariant variational problems is based on Noether’s theorem. It is shown that the use of Lie-Bäcklund transformation groups allows one to reduce the number of basic conserved quantities for differential equations obtained by Noether’s theorem and construct a basis of conservation laws. Several examples on constructing a basis for some well-known equations are provided. Moreover, this approach allows one to obtain new conservation laws even for equations without Lagrangians. A formal Lagrangian can be introduced and used for computing nonlocal conservation laws. For self-adjoint or quasi-self-adjoint equations nonlocal conservation laws can be transformed into local conservation laws. One of the fields of applications of this approach is electromagnetic theory, namely, nonlocal conservation laws are obtained for the generalized Maxwell-Dirac equations. The theory is also applied to the nonlinear magma equation and its nonlocal conservation laws are computed.