Physics Letters B 763 (2016) 218–227
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
The most general form of deformation of the Heisenberg algebra
from the generalized uncertainty principle
Syed Masood
a
, Mir Faizal
b,c,∗
, Zaid Zaz
d
, Ahmed Farag Ali
e
, Jamil Raza
a
, Mushtaq
B. Shah
f
a
Department of Physics, International Islamic University, H-10 Sector, Islamabad, Pakistan
b
Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, University of British Columbia – Okanagan, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7, Canada
c
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4, Canada
d
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, Kashmir, 190006, India
e
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Benha University, Benha, 13518, Egypt
f
Department of Physics, National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, Kashmir, 190006, India
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
17 August 2016
Received
in revised form 19 October 2016
Accepted
19 October 2016
Available
online 24 October 2016
Editor:
N. Lambert
In this paper, we will propose the most general form of the deformation of Heisenberg algebra
motivated by the generalized uncertainty principle. This deformation of the Heisenberg algebra will
deform all quantum mechanical systems. The form of the generalized uncertainty principle used to
motivate these results will be motivated by the space fractional quantum mechanics, and non-locality
in quantum mechanical systems. We also analyse a specific limit of this generalized deformation for
one dimensional system, and in that limit, a nonlocal deformation of the momentum operator generates
a local deformation of all one dimensional quantum mechanical systems. We analyse the low energy
effects of this deformation on a harmonic oscillator, Landau levels, Lamb shift, and potential barrier. We
also demonstrate that this deformation leads to a discretization of space.
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
A universal prediction of almost all approaches to quantum
gravity is the existence of a minimum measurable length scale, and
it is not possible to make physical measurements below this scale.
String theory is one of the most important approaches to quantum
gravity. The string length scale acts as a minimum length scale in
string theory as the strings are the smallest probes that exist in
the perturbative string theory [1–6]. The existence of a minimum
measurable length in loop quantum gravity turns the big bang into
a big bounce [7]. It can be argued from black hole physics that any
theory of quantum gravity should have a minimum measurable
length scale of the order of the Planck scale [8,9]. This is because
the energy needed to probe any region of space below Planck scale
is larger than the energy required to form a mini black hole in that
region of space. Even though the existence of a minimum measur-
able
length scale is predicted from various different theories, the
existence of a minimum measurable length scale is not consistent
with the usual Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This is because
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
address: mirfaizalmir@gmail.com (M. Faizal).
according to the usual Heisenberg uncertainty principle, length can
be measured with arbitrary precision, as long as the momentum is
not measured. To incorporate the existence of a minimum measur-
able
length scale in the uncertainty principle, the usual Heisenberg
uncertainty principle has to be generalized to a generalized uncer-
tainty
principle (GUP) [10–15]. The uncertainty principle is related
to the Heisenberg algebra, and so any modification of the uncer-
tainty
principle will deform the Heisenberg algebra [16–20]. The
deformation of the Heisenberg algebra will in turn modify the the
coordinate representation of the momentum operator [21–23]. As
the coordinate representation of the momentum operator is used
to derive the quantum mechanical behavior of a system, the mod-
ification
of the coordinate representation of the momentum op-
erator
will produce correction terms for all quantum mechanical
systems. It may be noted that even though the minimum mea-
surable
length scale has to exist at least at the Planck scale, it is
possible for the minimum measurable length scale to exist at a
much lower length scale. In fact, it has been demonstrated that if
the minimum measurable length scale exists at a scale much lower
than the Planck scale, then the deformation of the Heisenberg al-
gebra
produced by it can have interesting low energy consequences
[24].
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2016.10.047
0370-2693/
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.