Semiclassical Approximation of the Wigner Function for the Canonical Ensemble

The Weyl-Wigner representation of quantum mechanics allows one to map the density operator in a function in phase space-the Wigner function-which acts like a probability distribution. In the context of statistical mechanics, this mapping makes the transition from the classical to the quantum regimes very clear, because the thermal Wigner function tends to the Boltzmann distribution in the high temperature limit. We approximate this quantum phase space representation of the canonical density operator for general temperatures in terms of classical trajectories, which are obtained through a Wick rotation of the semiclassical approximation for the Weyl propagator. A numerical scheme which allows us to apply the approximation for a broad class of systems is also developed. The approximation is assessed by testing it against systems with one and two degrees of freedom, which shows that, for a considerable range of parameters, the thermodynamic averages are well reproduced.