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Department of Mathematics Seminars and Talks

 
Seminar

Symplectic

Talk Information
Title
Poisson geometry of wave functions
Start date and time
15:10 on Monday November 09, 2026
Duration in minutes
50 (until 16:00 on Monday November 09, 2026)
Room
BA6183, Bahen Center, 40 St. George St.
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Abstract

We describe the Poisson geometry of the Madelung transform between quantum mechanics and hydrodynamics for generic wave functions. It turns out that for arbitrary oriented manifolds this transform, being regarded as a momentum map, naturally defines prequantum bundles for coadjoint orbits of semidirect extensions of diffeomorphism groups. Furthermore, we show that the Madelung framework provides a natural infinite-dimensional version of the convexity results for Hamiltonian torus actions, thus giving a partial answer to Atiyah's question.

In particular, for wave functions without zeros our results provide a Kähler map between the infinite-dimensional Fubini–Study and Fisher–Rao geometries, thus extending previous results of Khesin–Misiolek–Modin to non-simply-connected manifolds. Furthermore, for wave functions with noncritical zeros, the Madelung transform is shown to be a symplectomorphism to the coadjoint orbits with Morse–Bott densities. The latter, in turn, furnishes a novel momentum map point of view on the Wallstrom quantization condition for the hydrodynamical form of quantum mechanics. This is a joint work with Klas Modin.

Speaker Information
Full Name
Boris Khesin
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Institution
University of Toronto
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