Quantizing the guiding center: do quantization and coarse graining commute?

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We develop a nonperturbative, group-theoretic quantization of the effective guiding center theory of a charged particle drifting in a magnetic field in two spatial dimensions, and compare the resulting quantum theory with a corresponding coarse graining of the underlying microscopic theory. In the classical effective theory, the small gyro motion is not resolved, while the motion of the center of the gyro orbit remains observable. The reduced phase space is the physical space itself, so quantization leads to noncommuting spatial coordinates, and the effective theory loses access to the metric structure of physical space, retaining only its area structure. By formulating a prescription to match between the microscopic and effective quantum theories, we find that the predictions of the quantized effective theory are generally consistent with those of the microscopic theory. However, for closed isomagnetic contours the effective theory predicts a quantization of ``radius'', a spatial discreteness absent from the microscopic theory. This illustrates that quantization of an effective theory may yield spurious nonperturbative predictions, even if that quantum theory shows no internal signs of breakdown.

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