Related papers: Against Fields
The formalism of quantum mechanics is presented in a way that its interpretation as a classical field theory is emphasized. Two coupled real fields are defined with given equations of motion. Densities and currents associated to the fields…
We do a critical review of the Faraday-Maxwell concept of classical field and of its quantization process. With the hindsight knowledge of the essentially quantum character of the interactions, we use a naive classical model of field, based…
The basic physics disciplines of Maxwell's electrodynamics and Newton's mechanics have been thoroughly tested in the laboratory, but they can nevertheless also support nonphysical solutions. The unphysical nature of some dynamical…
A unified and fully relativistic treatment of the interaction of the electric and magnetic dipole moments of a particle with the electromagnetic field is given. New forces on the particle due to the combined effect of electric and magnetic…
We show that in the Maxwell-Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon…
The challenges posed by the development of field theories, both classical and quantum, force us to question their most basic and foundational ideas like the role and origin of space-time, the meaning of physical states, etc. Among them the…
The problem of 1-dimensional ultra-relativistic scattering of 2 identical charged particles in classical electrodynamics with retarded and advanced interactions is investigated.
To develop a systematic treatment of the self-interaction problem in classical gauge theories and general relativity, we study tenable manifestations of self-interaction: topological phases, and rearrangements of degrees of freedom…
The earlier developed algorithm for constructing a self-conjugate Hamiltonian in the \eta-representation for Dirac particles interacting with a general gravitational field is extended to the case of electromagnetic fields. This Hamiltonian…
Quantum electrodynamics is the well-accepted theory. However, we feel it is useful to look at formalisms that provide alternative ways to describe light, because in the recent years the development of quantum field theories based primarily…
The concept of unified field theory is discussed. Two nonlinear field models with world volume type action are considered, namely extremal space-time film model and Born -- Infeld nonlinear electrodynamics. The natural appearance of two…
One of Feynman's greatest contributions to physics was the interpretation of negative energies as antimatter in quantum field theory. A key component of this interpretation is the Feynman propagator, which seeks to describe the behavior of…
The self-force problem of classical electrodynamics has two closely linked facets: The ill defined dynamics of a point charge due to the divergent self field at the position of the charge, and the divergence of formally conserved…
We consider the coupling of quantum fields to classical gravity in the formalism of ensembles on configuration space, a model that allows a consistent formulation of interacting classical and quantum systems. Explicit calculations show that…
Modern theories of fundamental interactions describe strong, electromagnetic and weak interactions as quantum field theories with certain kinds of embedded internal symmetries called `gauge symmetries'. This article introduces quantum field…
Quantum electrodynamics presents intrinsic limitations in the description of physical processes that make it impossible to recover from it the type of description we have in classical electrodynamics. Hence one cannot consider classical…
I briefly summarized some recent work which uses the techniques of effective field theory to make quantum predictions in general relativity. In contrast to conventional expectations, these are in fact well behaved. The leading quantum…
Einstein's distinction between principle theories and constructive theories is methodological rather than metaphysical. Principle theories such as thermodynamics and relativity articulate empirically distilled constraints that delimit…
We establish global existence and uniqueness of the dynamics of classical electromagnetism with extended, rigid charges and fields which need not to be square integrable. We consider also a modified theory of electromagnetism where no…
There are still no interacting models of the Wightman axioms, suggesting that the axioms are too tightly drawn. Here a weakening of linearity for quantum fields is proposed, with the algebra still linear but with the quantum fields no…