Construction of a photon position operator with commuting components from natural axioms

A general form of the photon position operator with commuting components fulfilling some natural axioms is obtained. This operator commutes with the photon helicity operator, is Hermitian with respect to the Bialynicki-Birula scalar product and defined up to a unitary transformation preserving the transversality condition. It is shown that, using the procedure analogous to the one introduced by T. T. Wu and C. N. Yang for the case of the Dirac magnetic monopole, the photon position operator can be defined by a flat connection in some trivial vector bundle over $\mathbb{R}^3 \setminus \{(0,0,0)\}$. This observation enables us to reformulate quantum mechanics of a~single photon on $(\mathbb{R}^{3} \setminus \{(0,0,0)\}) \times \mathbb{C}^2$.Comment: 19 pages, some corrections, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Anyons, group theory and planar physics

Relativistic and nonrelativistic anyons are described in a unified formalism by means of the coadjoint orbits of the symmetry groups in the free case as well as when there is an interaction with a constant electromagnetic field. To deal with interactions we introduce the extended Poincar\'e and Galilei Maxwell groups.Comment: 22 pages, journal reference added, bibliography update

Quantization on a 2-dimensional phase space with a constant curvature tensor

Some properties of the star product of the Weyl type (i.e. associated with the Weyl ordering) are proved. Fedosov construction of the *-product on a 2-dimensional phase spacewith a constant curvature tensor is presented. Eigenvalue equations for momentum p and position q on a 2-dimensional phase space with constant curvature tensors are solved.Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX, Annals of Physics (2003