Wigner functions for noncommutative quantum mechanics: A group representation based construction

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the construction and analysis of the Wigner functions for noncommutative quantum mechanics, their marginal distributions, and star-products, following a technique developed earlier, viz, using the unitary irreducible representations of the group GNC, which is the three fold central extension of the Abelian group of ℝ4. These representations have been exhaustively studied in earlier papers. The group GNC is identified with the kinematical symmetry group of noncommutative quantum mechanics of a system with two degrees of freedom. The Wigner functions studied here reflect different levels of non-commutativity—both the operators of position and those of momentum not commuting, the position operators not commuting and finally, the case of standard quantum mechanics, obeying the canonical commutation relations only.