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We study a system composed of a free quantum particle trapped in a box whose walls can change their position. We prove the global approximate controllability of the system. That is, any initial state can be driven arbitrarily close to any target state in the Hilbert space of the free particle with a predetermined final position of the box. To this purpose we consider weak solutions of the Schr\"odinger equation and use a stability theorem for the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation., Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure

We investigate the controllability of an infinite-dimensional quantum system: a quantum particle confined on a Thick Quantum Graph, a generalisation of Quantum Graphs whose edges are allowed to be manifolds of arbitrary dimension with quasi-$\delta$ boundary conditions. This is a particular class of self-adjoint boundary conditions compatible with the graph structure. We prove that global approximate controllability can be achieved using two physically distinct protocols: either using the boundary conditions as controls, or using time-dependent magnetic fields. Both cases have time-dependent domains for the Hamiltonians., Comment: The results on this article arise from splitting in two the original version. This contains the controllability results on higher dimensional versions of Quantum Graphs with magnetic laplacians. The results about existence and stability of the solutions of the non-autonomous Schr\"odinger equation appear in arXiv:2306.10203. This new version is the one accepted for publication

We investigate the validity of Huygens' principle for forward propagation in the massless Dirac-Weyl equation. The principle holds for odd space dimension n, while it is invalid for even n. We explicitly solve the cases n=1,2 and 3 and discuss generic $n$. We compare with the massless Klein-Gordon equation and comment on possible generalizations and applications., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure

The purpose of this article is to exploit the geometric structure of Quantum Mechanics and of statistical manifolds to study the qualitative effect that the quantum properties have in the statistical description of a system. We show that the end points of geodesics in the classical setting coincide with the probability distributions that minimise Shannon's Entropy, i.e. with distributions of zero dispersion. In the quantum setting this happens only for particular initial conditions, which in turn correspond to classical submanifolds. This result can be interpreted as a geometric manifestation of the uncertainty principle., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures

We propose a new point of view regarding the problem of time in quantum mechanics, based on the idea of replacing the usual time operator $\mathbf{T}$ with a suitable real-valued function $T$ on the space of physical states. The proper characterization of the function $T$ relies on a particular relation with the dynamical evolution of the system rather than with the infinitesimal generator of the dynamics (Hamiltonian). We first consider the case of classical Hamiltonian mechanics, where observables are functions on phase space and the tools of differential geometry can be applied. The idea is then extended to the case of the unitary evolution of pure states of finite-level quantum systems by means of the geometric formulation of quantum mechanics. It is found that $T$ is a function on the space of pure states which is not associated to any self-adjoint operator. The link between $T$ and the dynamical evolution is interpreted as defining a simultaneity relation for the states of the system with respect to the dynamical evolution itself. It turns out that different dynamical evolutions lead to different notions of simultaneity, i.e., the notion of simultaneity is a dynamical notion., Comment: 14 pages

The main objective of this dissertation is to analyse thoroughly the construction of self-adjoint extensions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator defined on a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary and the role that quadratic forms play to describe them. Moreover, we want to emphasise the role that quadratic forms can play in the description of quantum systems. A characterisation of the self-adjoint extensions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator in terms of unitary operators acting on the Hilbert space at the boundary is given. Using this description we are able to characterise a wide class of self-adjoint extensions that go beyond the usual ones, i.e. Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin,.. and that are semi-bounded below. A numerical scheme to compute the eigenvalues and eigenvectors in any dimension is proposed and its convergence is proved. The role of invariance under the action of symmetry groups is analysed in the general context of the theory of self-adjoint extensions of symmetric operators and in the context of closed quadratic forms. The self-adjoint extensions possessing the same invariance than the symmetric operator that they extend are characterised in the most abstract setting. The case of the Laplace-Beltrami operator is analysed also in this case. Finally, a way to generalise Kato's representation theorem for not semi-bounded, closed quadratic forms is proposed., Comment: PhD Thesis

A numerical algorithm to solve the spectral problem for arbitrary self-adjoint extensions of 1D regular Schroedinger operators is presented. It is shown that the set of all self-adjoint extensions of 1D regular Schroedinger operators is in one-to-one correspondence with the group of unitary operators on the finite dimensional Hilbert space of boundary data, and they are characterized by a generalized class of boundary conditions that include the well-known Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin, (quasi-)periodic boundary conditions, etc. The numerical algorithm is based on a nonlocal boundary extension of the finite element method and their convergence is proved. An appropriate basis of boundary functions must be introduced to deal with arbitrary boundary conditions and the conditioning of its computation is analyzed. Some significant numerical experiments are also discussed as well as the comparison with some standard algorithms. In particular it is shown that appropriate perturbations of standard boundary conditions for the free particle leads to the theoretically predicted result of very large absolute values of the negative groundlevels of the system as well as the localization of the corresponding eigenvectors at the boundary (edge states)., Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures