ACADEMIA Letters

Canonical Quantization Cannot Solve All Problems

John Klauder, University of Florida

Canonical quantization (CQ) can correctly work for many problems, but there are many more
classical systems that fail CQ. Imagine a human-sized half-pipe and a (frictionless) tennis
ball rolling up and down. That imitates the solution of a full-harmonic oscillator, which is a
common example for CQ. Now imagine that someone builds a strong, paper thin, wall at the
lowest point of the half-pipe which forces the tennis ball to rebound off the wall. That example
is known as a half-harmonic oscillator for which the tennis ball still passes up and down now
within only half of the half-pipe. This example is called a half-harmonic oscillator.
A new quantization procedure, known as affine quantization (AQ), can be used to solve the
half-harmonic oscillator, but it fails on the full-harmonic oscillator. This indicates that CQ and
AQ can each solve different sets of problems, which has the wonderful feature of expanding
the family of soluble quantum problems. Indeed, AQ can solve additional problems that were
previously impossible to solve by CQ (for more see arXiv:2005.08696).
So far we have focused on what AQ can do; now we address the question: What is AQ?
To understand AQ let us first explain CQ. For a single degree of freedom, there are specific
variables, the momentum, p, which represents velocity, and the coordinate, q, which represents
position. In addition, CQ requires that −∞ < p & q< ∞. Suitable pairs, p & q, are promoted
to operators, p → P & q→ Q, which, effectively, are two complex, square, matrices that obey
QP −P Q = ih̄11, where h̄ is Planck’s constant (divided by 2π), and 11 is the identity operator.
Again, now the operators must obey −∞ < P & Q < ∞. The combination of these two operators,
by addition and multiplication, build many operators, such as (P 2 + Q2 )/2 which is an energy
expression for a full (or for a half) harmonic oscillator.
A fundamental issue of CQ is what rule is chosen to promote p → P and q → Q to ensure
the correct physics. The answer to that question is that p & q must be Cartesian variables,
meaning that they can lie on a flat surface, as represented by dσ 2 = A−1 dp2 + Adq 2 , where A

Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: John Klauder, john.klauder@gmail.com

Citation: Klauder, J. (2021). Canonical Quantization Cannot Solve All Problems. Academia Letters, Article
3573. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3573.

1
is a positive constant. These variables are also identified as having a ‘constant zero curvature’.
Such variables are unique to CQ (for more see arXiv:2105.03206).
Next, let us introduce AQ. The primary operators are the dilation, D = (P Q + QP )/2 and
Q, which obey the rule QD − DQ = ih̄Q. Yes, apparently, D and Q, can be built from P and
Q from CQ, but that is not really true. The rule QD−DQ = ih̄Q fails when Q = 0 because
then D = 0 and P cannot help. While −∞ < D < ∞, we require that −∞ < Q ̸= 0 < ∞.
So far, it may seem that we could say that AQ is just a useful selection from CQ. However,
that would be incorrect. To see the difference, let us examine what classical variables, p
& q, are the correct variables to promote to D and Q. It turns out that the surface we are
seeking is not flat, as required by CQ, but is a ‘constant negative curvature’ for which dσ ′2 =
B −1 q 2 dp2 + Bq −2 dq 2 , where −∞ < p < ∞, and 0 < q < ∞ (or −∞ < q < 0), and
B is a positive constant. The insistence that q ̸= 0 has made a vast difference in the choice
of suitable classical variables. That fact makes AQ fully separate from CQ, and thus it offers
new quantization possibilities (for more see arXiv:2105.03206).
The use of AQ to examine quantum field theory (QFT) and quantum gravity (QG) has
been rewarding already. For example, the scalar field models, ϕ12 3 and ϕ4 , have led to some
4

“free” results with CQ [1, 2, 3], and have led to some “non-free” results with AQ [4, 5].
For Einstein’s classical gravity, with classical variables, the momentum π ab (x) and the met-
ric gcd (x), with a, b, c, d, . . . = 1, 2, 3, are confronted with positivity of the metric, i.e.,
ds(x)2 = gab (x) dxa dxb > 0, provided dxc is not all zero. Success for the scalar field ex-
ploits the requirement that ϕ(x) ̸= 0, and success for the gravity problem exploits the positiv-
ity of the classical metric, and thus also the quantum metric (for more see arXiv:2006.09156,
2010.16233, 2105.03206).

Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: John Klauder, john.klauder@gmail.com

Citation: Klauder, J. (2021). Canonical Quantization Cannot Solve All Problems. Academia Letters, Article
3573. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3573.

2
References
[1] M. Aizenman, “Proof of the Triviality. of ϕ4d Field Theory and Some Mean-Field Features
of Ising Models for d > 4”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 47, 1-4, E-886 (1981).

[2] J. Fröhlich, “On the Triviality of ϕ4d Theories and the Approach to the Critical Point in
d ≥ 4 Dimensions”, Nuclear Physics B 200, 281-296 (1982).

[3] M. Aizenman and H. Duminil-Copin, “Marginal triviality of the scaling limits of critical
4D Ising and ϕ44 model”, Annals of Mathematics 194, 1–73 (2021).

[4] R. Fantoni, “Monte Carlo Evaluation of the Continuum Limit of (φ12 )3 , Journal of Sta-
tistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 083102 (2021).

[5] R. Fantoni and J.R. Klauder, “Affine Quantization of ϕ44 Succeeds while Canonical Quan-
tization Fails”, Phys. Rev. D 103, 076013 (2021).

Academia Letters, September 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: John Klauder, john.klauder@gmail.com

Citation: Klauder, J. (2021). Canonical Quantization Cannot Solve All Problems. Academia Letters, Article
3573. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3573.