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Regularization by Test Function

Quantum Physics 2014-06-24 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Quantum fields are generally taken to be operator-valued distributions, linear functionals of test functions into an algebra of operators; here the effective dynamics of an interacting quantum field is taken to be nonlinearly modified by properties of test functions, in a way that preserves Poincar\'e invariance, microcausality, and the Fock-Hilbert space structure of the free field. The construction can be taken to be a physically comprehensible regularization because we can introduce a sequence that has a limit that is a conventional interacting quantum field, with the usual informal dependence of the effective dynamics on properties of the experimental apparatus made formally explicit as a dependence on the test functions that are used to model the experimental apparatus.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1406.5742,
  title  = {Regularization by Test Function},
  author = {Peter Morgan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.5742},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

7 pages. Some text adapted from arXiv:1211.2831v2 [math-ph]

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:44:20.843Z