Paper detail

Quantization of Pseudoclassical Systems in the Schrödinger Realization

We examine the quantization of pseudoclassical dynamical systems, models that have classically anticommuting variables, in the Schrödinger picture. We quantize these systems, which can be viewed as classical models of particle spin, using the generalized Gupta-Bleuler method as well as the reduced phase space method in even dimensions. With minimal modifications, the standard constructions of Schrödinger quantum mechanics of constrained systems work for pseudoclassical systems. We generalize the standard Schrödinger norm and implement the correct adjointness properties of observables and constraints. We construct the state space corresponding to spinors as physical wave functions of anticommuting variables, finding that there are superselection sectors in both the physical and ghost subspaces. The physical states are isomorphic to those of the Dirac-Kähler formulation of fermions though the inner product in Dirac-Kähler theory is not equivalent to ours.