Canonical quantization

In physics, canonical quantization is a procedure for quantizing a classical theory, while attempting to preserve the formal structure, such as symmetries, of the classical theory, to the greatest extent possible.

Historically, this was not quite Werner Heisenberg's route to obtaining quantum mechanics, but Paul Dirac introduced it in his 1926 doctoral thesis, the "method of classical analogy" for quantization, and detailed it in his classic text. The word canonical arises from the Hamiltonian approach to classical mechanics, in which a system's dynamics is generated via canonical Poisson brackets, a structure which is only partially preserved in canonical quantization.

This method was further used in the context of quantum field theory by Paul Dirac, in his construction of quantum electrodynamics. In the field theory context, it is also called second quantization, in contrast to the semi-classical first quantization for single particles.

When it was first developed, quantum physics dealt only with the quantization of the motion of particles, leaving the electromagnetic field classical, hence the name quantum mechanics.

Later the electromagnetic field was also quantized, and even the particles themselves became represented through quantized fields, resulting in the development of quantum electrodynamics (QED) and quantum field theory in general. Thus, by convention, the original form of particle quantum mechanics is denoted first quantization, while quantum field theory is formulated in the language of second quantization.

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