A quantum-mechanical central limit theorem

Abstract

The concepts of distribution operator, stochastic independence, convergence in distribution and normal distribution are formulated for pairs of canonically conjugate quantum-mechanical momentum and position operators. It is shown that if the sequence (pn, qn), n = 1, 2, ··· is stochastically independent and identically distributed with finite covariance and zero mean then the sequence of pairs of canonical observables converges in distribution to a normal limit distribution.