What is a field, what is a particle?
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Date
2019-01-25
Authors
Papageorgiou, Maria-Eftychia
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Waterloo
Abstract
Much of the structure of quantum field theory (QFT) is predicated on the principle
of locality. Adherence to locality is achieved in Algebraic QFT (AQFT) by the association
of algebras of observables with regions of spacetime. Although, by construction, the
observables of QFT are local objects, one may consider characterizing the spatial or spacetime
features of a state. For example, if we have a single-particle state in QFT, how can
we say that the particle is localized in a certain region of space? It turns out that such
a characterization is obstructed by a collection of no-go theorems that we will review in
the first two chapters, which imply the absence of any suitable position operator or local
number operator in the local algebra of observables. These difficulties, along with other
considerations that involve acceleration, gravity and interactions, suggest that relativistic
QFT cannot support a particle ontology. The common factor of all these reasons is the
theory of relativity, which is commonly blamed for the inappropriateness of the particle
notion in relativistic quantum theories.
Looking towards low energies, one finds the widespread applicability of non-relativistic
quantum mechanics (NRQM), a theory in which particle states are localizable by means of
their wavefunction. This seems to imply that NRQM can support a particle ontology, so it
is natural to ask whether one can make contact between the NRQM description of particles
and some appropriate notion in the latent QFT. Admittedly QFT and NRQM are very
different theories, both at the dynamical and kinematical level, and recovering one from the
other cannot come with no cost. The main undertaking of this thesis will be to illuminate
this connection, by starting with a relativistic QFT and making suitable approximations
to recover features of NRQM. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the existence of
vacuum entanglement in a relativistic QFT is further obscuring the localizability of states.
This is why we are investigating the behavior of vacuum entanglement under the non
relativistic approximation to ask whether vacuum entanglement is a relativistic effect.
Description
Keywords
relativity, localizability, vacuum entanglement