I saw in this MO post: Is there a machinery describing all the irreducible representations ? that classifying irreducible representations of the Weyl algebra is essentially intractable. My question is if it becomes more reasonable if one restricts to unitary irreps.
To be completely precise: By the Weyl algebra I mean the complex algebra generated by 1, a+, and a− subject to the relations [a+,a−]=1. A unitary representation is a complex vector space V with a Hermitian form, on which the Weyl algebra acts in such a way that a+ and a− are adjoint pairs (and 1 acts as 1). There is no topological component: V need not be complete, the operators must be everywhere defined, and irreducible means no subrepresentations (not just 'no closed subrepresentations').
I know that the Fock space (generated by a vector v with a−v=0) is one such irrep, and one can conjugate by automorphisms to the algebra to obtain other irreps: a+↦αa++βa−; a−↦¯βa++¯αa−; where |α|2−|β|2=1. The automorphisms where β=0 do not give distinct irreps, so one gets a two-dimensional space of irreps (unless there are other redundancies here).
Any futher explanations or references would be great, thanks!
This post imported from StackExchange MathOverflow at 2014-11-18 15:07 (UTC), posted by SE-user Alex Zorn