How many degrees of freedom describe a quantum N-particle state?

Abstract

In Newtonian spacetime, the canonical description of a classical $N$-particle system requires $3N$ degrees of freedom. Not all of these are physical, however, since the conservation of the net momentum implies that only $3(N-1)$ accelerations are independent. Hence, three constraints can be used to eliminate the unphysical centre-of-mass variables, at the level of the Lagrangian, leaving only the subset of observable displacements and momenta, which are relational. Imposing the constraints does not change the dynamics of these variables, at the classical level, and is analogous to a gauge-fixing procedure, which removes redundancy in the description of the system. In classical physics, therefore, the number of physical degrees of freedom equals the number of independent relational degrees of freedom. Here, we show that this is not the case in quantum mechanics. While an operator-analogue of the classical net momentum exists, it cannot be used to impose constraints that restrict the degrees of freedom in the theory, without a loss of physical information. This means that all $3N$ canonical degrees of freedom are physical, even though only $3(N-1)$ of them are relational. We explore the physical consequences of the non-relational variables and show that they give rise to generalised uncertainty relations (GURs), for the relational quantities that define the quantum reference frame (QRF). Hence, it is shown that the non-relational degrees of freedom refer to the frame itself and that the non-Heisenberg terms in the GURs define its Galilean-invariant spreads, in both real space and momentum space. The implications of this result for recent work on relational models, including the ``perspective neutral'' framework for QRFs, are discussed. Its implications for the wider relational program, and, in particular, the relevance of the latter to quantum gravity research, are also critically assessed