Quantum Monodromy in Integrable Systems

Abstract

Let P1(h),...,Pn(h) be a set of commuting self-adjoint h-pseudo-differential operators on an n-dimensional manifold. If the joint principal symbol p is proper, it is known from the work of Colin de Verdiere [6] and Charbonnel [3] that in a neighbourhood of any regular value of p, the joint spectrum locally has the structure of an affine integral lattice. This leads to the construction of a natural invariant of the spectrum, called the quantum monodromy. We present this construction here, and show that this invariant is given by the classical monodromy of the underlying Liouville integrable system, as introduced by Duistermaat [9]. The most striking application of this result is that all two degree of freedom quantum integrable systems with a focus-focus singularity have the same non-trivial quantum monodromy. For instance, this proves a conjecture of Cushman and Duistermaat [7] concerning the quantum spherical pendulum.