English

Spin Path Integrals and Generations

General Physics 2010-12-01 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

The spin of a free electron is stable but its position is not. Recent quantum information research by G. Svetlichny, J. Tolar, and G. Chadzitaskos have shown that the Feynman \emph{position} path integral can be mathematically defined as a product of incompatible states; that is, as a product of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs). Since the more common use of MUBs is in finite dimensional Hilbert spaces, this raises the question "what happens when \emph{spin} path integrals are computed over products of MUBs?" Such an assumption makes spin no longer stable. We show that the usual spin-1/2 is obtained in the long-time limit in three orthogonal solutions that we associate with the three elementary particle generations. We give applications to the masses of the elementary leptons.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1006.3114,
  title  = {Spin Path Integrals and Generations},
  author = {C. A. Brannen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.3114},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

20 pages, 2 figures, accepted at Foundations of Physics

R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:36:53.427Z