English

Causal measurement in quantum field theory: spacetime

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-04-06 v2 Quantum Physics

Abstract

We provide a framework and explicit construction for the regularized measurement of a large class of spacetime-localized observables in bosonic quantum field theory. The measurements fully satisfy relativistic causality and causal transparency, i.e., avoid unphysical superluminal signaling. We show explicitly how the measurement of time-extended observables back-reacts on itself and induces correlations between other measurements in its causal future. Our framework is fully compositional in spacetime and extends previous results on the measurement of instantaneous observables.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.06566,
  title  = {Causal measurement in quantum field theory: spacetime},
  author = {Robert Oeckl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.06566},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

40 pages, 6 figures; v2: minor corrections, changed numbering style in appendices to match published version

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:28:40.699Z